My Own Worst Enemy
by Jak-rabitt
Summary: Tekk Lanyang always wanted to be a hero like Sonic. But the path leading to being a hero often also leads to becoming a monster. RATED M: Language, graphic violence
1. 000 - This Is How I Start My Story

**PROLOGUE**

 _"I was dead to begin with."_

 _000- This Is How I Start My Story_

Two things: Who I was is unimportant. How I died, is. Strangely, when I offer to tell this story, people insist on the former and often dismiss the latter. I have to tell you now, that who I was is wholly unimportant, as he died the moment I was born. But I suppose that his brief life does inform some decisions I made after I was reborn. And as I hope that this will be the definitive version of my story, I will recount who I was and how I came to be who I am now. Please pay attention; I do not wish to repeat myself often.

I was born Ivan Romanof before my rebirth. This was in a different time, back when Overlanders still walked the surface, waging war on those who they deemed different. I wish to say that my kin were different, and although they have tried to brand themselves as a peace-loving species different from the Overlanders, I can attest that they were not. In the fifth year of my life, there was a shift in the world. A madman, once a respected member of the king's council, betrayed our race and established the Robotnik dominion over us.

My father was Vladimir Romanf, a sturdy badger from the east. He died protecting me and my mother from the invading forces. My mother was Naomi Romanof, nee Sanson. She was a vixen from here in Knothole. She died soon after my father died, trying to escape from the city which had fallen under the red banner of the Robotnik reign of terror.

In that time, Doctor Robotnik had discovered a way to bolster his forces while decimating his enemies. Through a process called "robotization", he could replace the organic components of a living being with inorganic ones, rendering them a mass of metal and computational components. Through his understanding of electronics, he was able to force his will on those who became robotized. So, shortly after my mother left me, I was captured and turned into one of these automatons; incapable of will.

While some might mourn for the death of my parents, I am glad they died when they did. For they didn't have to see my enslavement, my death, or see me for the monster I eventually became.

* * *

 _ **Hi, this is Jak-rabitt, the author. I wanted to start things off by explaining a little bit about this story. (This isn't crucial to read, so if you're just here for the story, feel free to move on). This story is a fiction that takes place in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, specifically the Archie Comics universe. But it actually has very little to do with the characters usually found within it. I've been working out the plot of this for the better part of a decade and finally was encouraged by my wife to write it down and publish it somewhere. So this is it. It's a slow-moving kind of personal story about Tekk Lanyang (who isn't even named that until later).  
**_

 ** _I don't plan on doing anything that would bump this into a 'M' rating, necessarily, although as the story progresses into darker and darker themes, I may change the rating. As it is, for now, the only thing you may have to worry about is the occasional swear word._**

 ** _Most of the setting is based off of my vague memory of locations and events that transpired in the Archie Comics before the Megaman/Sonic crossover saga, which is just as well, since the universe was rebooted like, twice after that. That said, if something doesn't add up as far as lore goes, (dates, names of places, etc) please let me know. It'll probably be a small slip-up, but it will drive me nuts if the small bits of canon I have early on aren't correct. (Later on, though, this will go wildly off canon, so don't worry about it.)_**

 ** _Thanks for reading._**


	2. 001 - This Was How I Died

**ACT 1**

 _"If you've gone your entire life thinking you're the hero, you're probably the villain."_

 _001 – This Was How I Died_

I can't offer explanation of how I was freed from my enslavement. As I understand it, it had something to do with the actions of the "Freedom Fighters" and specifically, the hero of Mobius, Sonic the Hedgehog. I have to admit that my perception of the exact dates is a little skewed. So much had happened while I was away, but everything stayed the same. And while some might not feel it, I sense, deep in my bones, that the world in which we dwell is not the same as it was when I was born. The power that seeps from the planet is different and see a schism between where we stand and where I once stood.

I'm sorry, I digressed.

The point I wanted to make was that it was due to the actions of the Freedom Fighters; the Princess of Knothole Sally Acorn, Sonic the Hedgehog, and all of their friends, that I gained my freedom and my flesh and bone body again. I awoke from my enslavement to discover that my body had aged. I was now a young fox in his early adulthood, the prime of my life. It would seem that I had the entire world at my fingertips, but in truth, I was utterly average. Finding any evidence that one named Ivan Romanof ever existed would be difficult if you didn't know where to look. And I can tell you only one place where I know for sure there is evidence that he ever existed. In the ledgers where they inscribe fallen Freedom Fighters.

See, after I regained my body, I started to worship the Freedom Fighters. I idolized Sonic the Hedgehog. I envied Miles Prower. I have to mention that I even harbored secret affection for the Princess. I felt that the only option I had was to become a Freedom Fighter myself. As it would happen, many other newly freed Mobians harbored the same idea. The term "Freedom Fighter" grew from a small group of friends fighting against the tyranny of Robotnik to a military force, comprised of hundreds, if not thousands, of recruits, all hoping to prove themselves heroes. I signed up with many others, and having no special skills or training, I was left to do grunt work.

I would say that I resented that fact, but I wasn't alive long enough to resent my station. At that time, the Freedom Fighters wanted to know more about the lands immediately surrounding the small city of Knothole. I can't offer explanation of what they were hoping to find. All I know is that I was tasked with carrying the equipment. I can't recall the names of the two other Freedom Fighters who led the expedition; only that they were there.

We traveled east by car for a day until we discovered what appeared to be a long abandoned rock quarry. Carrying surveying equipment, a large machine whose purpose I was never privy to know (but I was informed several times the _cost_ of the machine if I were to drop it), and a large backpack, I made my way down the narrow, jack-knifing path to the bottom of the quarry. The large stone walls somehow absorbed the sound from the world around us. It was quiet. Disturbingly so. The light that filtered down into the stone pit was darkened, so that even in the middle of the day, the impression that we were nearing the late evening was unmistakable.

On our second day in that pit, we picked up seismic activity on some of the instruments. One of the machines pointed the source of the rumblings from a small fissure in the rock wall. Being the skinniest of the group (and the lowest ranking member), I was elected to climb up and investigate. I felt certain that I would fall and become nothing but a smear at the bottom of this quarry; destined to not go down in the annals of history, but rather in a ledger in a Freedom Fighter records office somewhere with an asterisk next to my name.

I somehow managed to reach the fissure without losing my footing and peered inside. The fissure opened up into a cavern of sorts just beyond the entrance and a light source from deep inside the cave illuminated the rock walls with an eerie glow. I shouted down to my peers below and they urged me to go inside. I hoisted myself inside, squeezing through the crack and saw the source of the light. It appeared to be a strange, gaseous substance, bubbling up through the solid rock floor. It was as though the aurora borealis was shrunk down and left in this small cave. I approached it warily and could feel power boiling off its shimmering surface.

I hear that phrase a lot, "feeling power", and I rarely understand what people mean by it. For me, at least in this instance, it felt akin to what it must feel like to be a king or a god. The steady assurance that if I were to wish for anything I desired, it would be served to me on a silver platter. That was the impression I gleaned from this… substance. And, as confusing as it may sound, this feeling was in the ambience, not within my being. I suppose that you just had to be there to experience it for yourself to truly understand.

Anyways, as I stood in the cave, transfixed by this bubbling power before me, I heard frantic shouting from down in the quarry below. As I turned to see what was happening, I felt the earth lurch beneath my feet. Several large rocks fell in front of me and I stumbled backwards, my feet catching on one another. I felt that sickening feeling in the split second between realizing you're going to fall, and actually hitting the ground. I passed through the shimmering light and it immediately snuffed out as I hit my head on the rock floor. Stars burst in my vision and I let out a shout. That shout didn't carry far and it fell, stale, in the small enclosure.

As my head cleared, I was surprised at the lack of dust in the air. In fact, the air itself was much colder than it had been when I'd first entered. It was stale, as though it had been trapped in the cave for a long time without being able to circulate. The energy was gone and I was left all alone. I yelled for my crew, asking for help and letting them know I was alright, but the voice, again, fell stale and dead on my own ears. It suddenly occurred to me that I might actually be trapped inside this cave.

Yet, I wasn't panicking. I felt strangely calm. The cave was completely black, with no light to see by, yet I was able to navigate towards where the rocks fell, covering the entrance with no difficulty. I pushed on the rocks. I felt them give, possibly too easily, and I saw light suddenly filter into the cave. It was darker than I remembered it. Had I been knocked unconscious by the blow to my head? I looked down into the quarry and saw no camp, no equipment, and no sign of any life at all. In fact, I noticed several large pools of stagnant water that hadn't been there before. How long had I been unconscious? I carefully climbed down the rock face and stood at the bottom of the quarry, looking up. Everything was the same, but there was some subtle change that I couldn't comprehend consciously. My peers were gone and with them, my only mode of transportation, and all my supplies. I stood for a moment, weighing my options, and decided that walking home would be my only course of action.


	3. 002 - This Was How I Found My New Self

_002 – This Was How I Discovered My New Self_

Knothole was never very big. It was a very small city that grew out of the survivors of when Mobotropolis was first attacked by Doctor Robotnik. Even that small city had been shrunk further by raids and ill-planned ventures into enemy territory. Although it had grown substantially after the liberation I discussed earlier, it was still fairly small when compared to Megaopolis, Mobotropolis, or any other city that had risen and fallen in recent history. That said, it would be hard for me to miss it as I walked back. Yet, somehow I managed to do just that.

The car ride out to the quarry had only taken the better part of a day. On foot, that meant that the return trip would take a few days if I were moving swiftly. Considering that I only knew the general direction I needed to travel, it was surprising that I found anything at all. But I was fortuitous to stumble on some campers out in the woods.

They were gathered around a campfire with a tent propped up between two trees as I ambled up out of the forest. They were kind enough to share food with me and inform me of a few things. First of all, Knothole simply didn't exist anymore. The _ruins_ existed, they told me, but no one lived there. Apparently Robotnik, now "Doctor Eggman", had made a final move against Sonic and the rest of the Freedom Fighters. Eggman had won a victory and destroyed our home, but Sonic and a majority of the inhabitants survived and made a new city, New Mobotropolis. The campers told me all of this while eyeing me suspiciously. All of this had happened a couple of years ago; just how long had I been lost in the woods? I lied and told them that I was traveling from far away and must have been using an out of date guidebook (that I'd also lost along the way). In the end, they pointed me in the right direction and I went off in search for New Mobotropolis.

The woods were a glorious emerald green as I walked through the trees. The air was rich with the smell of pine and the sounds of small birds and animals filled the air. I enjoyed the walk, finding it pleasant and wondering why I didn't do more walks like this out in nature. It wasn't until sundown the day after I'd left the campers that it started dawning on me: I hadn't eaten or drank all day and I didn't feel fatigued at all. My feet didn't ache, my legs weren't sore, and I didn't feel at all hungry or thirsty. This was the first moment that I realized that something had happened to me. (Up to this point I had just discounted the story of Knothole as a curiosity and nothing more.) When I woke up the next morning, I found myself well rested, albeit dew-covered, and still not hungering for anything. At some point that morning, I ambled past a serene lake, so I decided I'd take a brake and skip some stones.

As I approached the water, I noticed that my reflection had changed. Before, I was a very non-descript kind of fox. The kind that would appear in the background and garner no attention. Now, though, my coat shone more brightly in the sun, healthier than ever before. My figure was more defined than I'd ever seen it in my life, showing off more of my badger heritage than I thought possible. Most striking was my eyes. Before, my eyes had been a common shade of brown. Now, they were a brilliant shade of aquamarine. They almost seemed to glow in my reflection. I stared at myself for the better part of an hour before I realized I needed to be going. Tearing myself away from my self-examination, I started heading on my path again.

My mind was racing as I kept looking down at my arms, noticing for the first time how much more thickly muscled they were. I felt them, noticing how firm the felt under my hand. I forced myself to stop touching my arms by shoving my hands into the pockets of my, now dirty, blue jeans.

Throughout that entire day, I felt something building inside of me. Something was adding up in my subconscious and it was coming to a head soon. I'd read stories of super heroes; the fictitious epics of the average joe suddenly waking up to discover that he could fly or had the powers of a spider or some such nonsense. And, sure, like every adult, I secretly waited for the day when those powers would suddenly be made known to me. The day when I was revealed to have some mysterious alien origin, or to be part of some long-secret order of beings whose power rivaled those of the gods. But I'd never seriously believe that anything like that would ever _actually_ happen to me. But maybe that subconscious expectation was what prompted me to do what I did next.

After mulling around my physical change in appearance, the fact that I hadn't needed to eat for the better part of a week now, and this buzzing feeling my entire body seemed to be generating, I decided I'd try to test out my latent abilities. So I stopped walking and found a tree that seemed like a good target. After listening hard for a few moments and looking around to ensure that I was alone, I spread my legs apart and lifted my arms in a dynamic pose. _If someone does something embarrassing alone in the forest, did it ever really happen?_ I asked myself.

What I did next, I'll try my best to explain, though it's hard to capture in words. I saw the tree, and then, in an impulse of feeling rather than actual thought, I forced the tree to explode from the innermost parts of the trunk outwards. I mean, I could feel the wood expanding rapidly; where there was no space, suddenly there was lots of space. I expanded my hand and suddenly, I was flat on my ass, peppered in wood shards. Millions of pieces of shrapnel stung my body. I had done that. I was sure of it.

A dozen other explanations raced through my mind as I picked myself up. Maybe there was someone out here with a new kind of explosive and they blew up a tree? What if someone else was the superhero and blew it up and didn't notice I was standing so close? Maybe trees can just blow up from time to time?

All of these didn't sit well with me, so I tried it again, only on a pinecone instead of an entire tree. The pinecone vaporized itself in the palm of my hand and I started grinning ear to ear. I was elated. I was terrified. I was proud. I was confused. It had been so _easy_ to blow up the tree (and the pinecone). I continued walking, experimenting as I walked along. I discovered that I could crush things. I could manipulate matter. I found that night that if I really focused and tried to feel them, I could manipulate individual molecules to bind with one another. I could lift things bigger than me; with both my hands and my mind. I couldn't find any limit to my new powers. I was the king, and all of reality was my domain. If I willed it, if I could _conceive_ it, I could make it happen.

Almost. I discovered that I had my limits as well. I couldn't create matter from nothing. I had spent the better part of an hour before abandoning that train of thought. I reasoned that I could probably rearrange the elements around me if I had a better idea of what I was doing, but that was far too much for me. It was exhausting to even try, which meant I must've been doing something right.

The most exhilarating moment of that day, I have to admit, was when I learned how to fly. I really cannot overstate how exhilarating that was. I had reasoned that if I could pick up other things, rocks, trees, etcetera, then why not pick up myself? So I did. It felt like I was laying in one of those space-age future beds. The kind that form fit to your body. Only I was being lifted up by that bed. I think there's enough literature, theory, and fantasy out there for you to draw your own conclusions what the ability to fly is like. All I feel I can add is that it feels oddly similar to how it feels when you dream that you can fly; as though your mind has been expecting it and has been ready for the moment that you leave the surly bonds of gravity and take to the sky for your entire life. Also, it's very cold the higher up you go.

That's something that fantasy and your dreams rarely prepare you for. Now, I had assumed that my body no longer needed heat to survive, since it didn't need anything else to survive either. (I had held my breath for an hour before deciding that air was no longer needed.) And while it was technically true that my body would keep functioning at freezing temperatures, it didn't stop my body from _feeling_ those freezing temperatures. So when I shot myself high into the air, the euphoria I felt was quickly tempered by the realization that my simple navy blue hoodie wasn't going to handle the thin air a few miles up. I wasn't shivering in that cold, but it still felt more frigid than anything I'd ever felt before, and it wasn't something I was eager to experience any time soon.

But from that high up, I could see the world. I ignored the cold for as long as I could as I took in the beauty of the landscapes below. The mountains and the plateaus to the north. The wide oceans to the south and the forests to the east. Floating along the southern coast was a small land mass, hovering slowly in the sky as Angel Island made its lethargic circuit around the globe. And not too far to the west, I could see a sprawling landscape with a large, sandy wall built around the perimeter. There were trees and houses, so I knew it wasn't whatever Robotnik (sorry, I mean _Eggman_ ) was using as a fortress these days. I decided that if this wasn't New Mobotropolis, then surely they knew where it was.

So I fell from the sky, feeling that invisible mattress disappear and enjoying the ride down. It occurred to me that it took longer to fall back to the ground than it did to fly up. My stomach dropped as I plummeted from the sky. Tears streaked my face. Only once or twice did I slow my descent, out of some misplaced fear that now would be when my powers would suddenly vanish. Eventually, the landscapes that seemed so distant at first clarified and grew bigger almost exponentially. When I hit the top of the canopy line of the forest, I slowed my descent. I realized with about sixty feet left to go that I needed to hit the brakes a lot harder than I already was. So I grabbed myself quickly and brought myself to an immediate stop some ten feet from the ground. It shook my body hard. My vision suddenly blurred and I saw gray creeping in from the sides of my vision. I felt a sick warmth crawl up my back: I was going to throw up.

And I did. Or, rather, I tried to. I hadn't eaten anything for days so the nausea took longer than it should've to fully leave my body. I tried to will it away, apply my power to it and make it disappear, but it seemed like my body was trying to teach me a lesson about flying it didn't want me to forget. After a half-hour of dry heaving, I continued my journey westward on foot. While flying was exhilarating, and a little nausea was a small price to pay for the ability to fall from low orbit and not die, it wouldn't do to come flying in at top speed like a missile. I'd reveal my abilities when I was ready to, and not a moment sooner.


	4. 003 - This Was How I Started My New Life

_003 – This Was How I Started My New Life_

Entering New Mobotropolis was a hell of an experience for me. I'd never seen a city so large that was also bustling with life. The walls stretched far around the city, with a sandy color that somehow seemed to give the impression of both technology and nature at the same time. They looked natural, but I could feel a small hum about them, as though they were alive somehow. This differed from how the forest felt that I'd just left. I couldn't explain it.

Just beyond the open gates I could see a bustling highway leading towards the city center. The highway was made from the same sandy-colored substance as the walls, and although a motorized cart was parked here and there on the side of the road, most of the traffic was on foot. The buildings that lined the road were tall and squished tightly together. While a majority of them had a color scheme to match the road and city walls, almost all of them had some instances of greenery growing on, around, or in some cases, _inside_ them. It wasn't uncommon to see a tree branch sticking up out of a wall, as though the building had been built around the plant. The amount of foliage near the rooftops was staggering for such a large city. Green light filtered down between the leaves and shaded the people on the road, as they went along with their hustle and bustle.

My first task upon entering the city was to find out how to patriate myself there. It occurred to me that the identifications I had on me all had a wildly different fox than the one I currently was. I asked around and was directed to the Citizen's Bureau. The building was near the city center, where the roads became wider and the buildings more ornate. In the distance, I saw something that looked almost like a castle towering above all of the other buildings. The Citizen's Bureau was a smaller, more utilitarian building, and the inside was designed to make efficient use of space. The line was long to get to the attendant, but it seemed to move swiftly. I soon realized that the war with the Eggman Empire had driven many people in smaller cities to come seek refuge here.

My number was called and I approached the desk. A chipper looking squirrel greeted me. I looked down at her name on the plaque on her desk.

"Um, hi, Sam. I have two issues I need taken care of." I said.

"Sure thing. What can I do for you?" She asked smiling.

"First, I want to know what information you have on a citizen. Ivan Romanof?" I spelled out the name for her as she typed it out into her computer terminal. As she accessed the information, she told me politely that the only things she could tell me were facts that were open to the public. Date of Birth, employment status, and things of that nature couldn't be shared with me. I told her that was fine. There really was only one question I needed answered, and I tried to keep my wits about me as she found the information.

"Oh. It appears here that he died in the line of duty some few years ago." She said, frowning slightly.

"Is there any more information than that?" I asked.

"Nothing I can give you, sorry. Was there something else I could help you with?"

I forced myself to focus at the task at hand, even though I had just been told that I had died.

"Yes, actually. I am looking to become a citizen of New Mobotropolis."

Sam frowned a little more.

"Do you have any identification? Passports, birth certificates, city issued ID?"

It was my turn to frown. I didn't have anything like that. Or, at least, nothing that didn't report me as having a dead fox's identification. The red flags that would raise wouldn't likely get me anywhere.

"Uh… no…" I admitted, letting the apprehension show on my face. Sam gave me a sad smile.

"Have you started any of the paperwork process? What is your name, I can see if there's anything."

I hesitated, then blurt out the first name that came to my mind.

"Tekk Lanyang." I said. This was the name of a super hero from an old science fiction novel I'd read shortly after I was liberated. The story was interesting to me, involving a group of time travelers as they tried to save all of time and space from some evil corporation. I'd identified heavily with the character and thought his name sounded cool, with the two 'k's in his name. I spelled it out for Sam, knowing full well that she wasn't going to find anything.

Sam shook her head sadly.

"I'm sorry mister Lanyang, but I don't-" her computer beeped.

"Oh. It says here that you've finished the enrolment process already. You've been assigned housing in the following district." She handed me a slip of paper that had an address on it. "If you follow that line over there, someone will help you obtain your New Mobotropolis identification documents."

After an hour of filling out paperwork and waiting in line, I left the Citizen's Bureau in high, if not confused, spirits. I found a bus that took me to the district where my new house awaited me and puzzled over how I was already in the system. I started dreading the concept that I may have just stolen a house from someone who actually was a refugee from the war. Or maybe they were already living there and a computer error had stolen their identity for me.

The bus dropped me off and I made my way towards the address listed. The houses were set further apart since they were further from the metropolitan areas of the city. The houses were still being constructed, I assumed, as my house was sitting at the end of a street without any other houses on it. I could see the wall of the city off in the distance beyond my house. I was really out in the boonies, it would seem.

The house was small. From the outside, it looked like a cube sitting on the grass, with two windows upstairs and two downstairs. A walkway ran from the road to the side of the house where the door was located. I approached the door and saw a small black box hanging from the doorknob. A small, grey plate was on the surface with a note that read, "Thumbprint here". I pressed my thumb to the plate and the box opened up to reveal a set of keys. I used them to unlock the door and entered my new house.

The house was furnished sparsely. A table with four chairs sat in the kitchen, which also doubled as the entry way. Beyond that was a living area with a sofa facing a small television mounted on the wall. Above the living area was a loft with a queen sized bed and a dresser; a bathroom was built just off the bedroom. The walls were white and the floors appeared to be hardwood. There was very little personality in my home.

As I entered the living room, the TV came to life.

"Hello and welcome to your new home, _Tekk Lanyang_." The TV said. My name was said in a stilted way which led me to believe that everyone got this message when they first moved in.

"Your housing has been selected for you based on your criteria listed in your profile at the Citizen's Bureau. Home customization options are available thanks to nanite remodeling. Please choose your selection on the screen."

The screen displayed several options about customizing my home.

"Nanite remodeling?" I said to myself quietly as I chose the top option.

As it turned out, nanites were small molecular computers. Evidently, they'd been acquired during the war against Eggman and a computer entity known as "Nicole" had built the entire city out of them after Knothole had been destroyed. I seemed to vaguely recall a "Nicole" with the Freedom Fighters, but I thought it was some palm-pilot computer, not an actual artificial intelligence. Things had certainly changed since I was away.

The home was built out of nanites as well, which meant that most commodities and furniture could be assembled out of the nanites. Any additions to the house, within reasonable limits, could be added on by selecting it from the menu and submitting a request to "Housing Development". The nanites would then reshape themselves to fit whatever the user requested. New furniture could be ordered for a small fee and even the aesthetics of the house could be changed from here as well. It turned out I had a free remodeling credit so I could change the theme of my house once without payment. I selected a "woods" theme and the white walls around me shimmered and shifted until it felt as though I were living inside a hollowed out tree. The furniture took on a wood-worked quality and even the loft had a wooden bannister running across the railing that made it feel almost like I was living in a cabin. I liked it.

I sat down and started browsing through the other options I had on the terminal. I found an internet search function and set about getting myself brought up to speed. I researched everything I could about the history that had passed me by, about how Nicole grew in scope and in scale until she pretty much single-handedly ran the city. New buildings were being built all the time as refugees came pouring in and what used to be a massive drain on resources to accomplish was now done in a few minutes thanks to the miracle of the nanites.

I also discovered more about what had happened to me. First of all, I was dead. Definitively. Ivan Romanof had died when he entered that fissure in the quarry. In fact, I found out that there was a monument with his name on it somewhere in the city. Not dedicated to him, of course, but his name was listed with all of the Freedom Fighters who had died in the past few years. There was no real data on who he was other than a brief quip about how he died while on a science expedition. There wasn't even a picture of him. That was fine with me, I concluded. He no longer existed. I had the rare opportunity to remake myself however I wanted.

I also came up with a theory on how I came to be how I was. See, I grew up in a world where magic existed. Beings had special powers that were often left unexplained. How Sonic could run as fast as he does or how Tails could fly were both heavily researched, yet no actual concrete explanation was ever published. It was a mystery. Related to those kinds of beings were something called the chaos emeralds. These were chunks of rock that had some strange and mysterious powers.

This power came from the very core of the planet and used to bubble up to the surface in the form of these emeralds, though no one had ever seen one appear. I hypothesized that what we had discovered that day was raw chaos energy before it had a chance to coalesce into a chaos emerald. When I came into contact with it, it fused with my body, giving me powers beyond my wildest dreams.

Now, originally, it seemed as though there were dozens of chaos emeralds on Mobius. But something I found in the darker, seedier parts of the internet talked about a "chaos convergence". It claimed that a super-planar being named Feist had pulled all of the chaos emeralds from all corners of the galaxy and condensed them into seven larger and more perfect stones, which he kept in the Special Zone for safe keeping. Apparently, I had somehow escaped from this convergence, leaving me to be the only form of chaos emerald on Mobius.

The closest being that had ever existed like me was a semi-deity named Enerjak. His power was drawn from the master emerald which was guarded by the echidna race. The guardian would temporarily take the master emerald's energy into their own body, but the host usually died afterwards. The most terrifying part of this story, to me at least, was that Enerjak was usually seen as a god of destruction in the lore of the echidnas. Everyone was frightened of its power and small groups of believers trembled at the day when Enerjak would return.

But as far as I could tell, Enerjak only borrowed the energy from a chaos emerald. I, on the other hand, was a living, breathing chaos emerald. There was never a being like me before. And with Feist gathering all together all the rogue chaos energy in the universe, there never would be again.

I eventually forced myself to switch off the screen and go to bed. Not that I needed sleep, but I couldn't keep looking things up without taking time to process what I'd read. I needed to come up with a plan of what I would do now that I was living here. The mystery of how I was able to become a citizen and find a place to live without any paperwork or identification stay floating in the back of my mind, but I tried to ignore it for now. I had more important things to worry about.


	5. 004 - This Was What I Did Next

_004 – This Was What I Did Next_

It's remarkably easy to not spend money when you don't need to eat. That fact alone kept me afloat in my new home for a week. But utilities weren't free, and even though I didn't _need_ to drink water or eat food, I still did out of habit and pleasure. And I definitely still needed to bathe. I'm sure there is a way to clean myself using my powers, but I've yet to discover it. Add in the fact that I owned exactly one outfit, and I decided that I needed a job.

Maybe it was patriotism. Maybe it was hero worship. Or maybe it was sheer habit, but I decided I'd enlist in the Freedom Fighters again. After all, it wasn't as if I didn't have a personal stake in this war or anything. Eggman had taken everything from me. He needed to be stopped. And the Freedom Fighters was the way to do it. Well, in truth, I had toyed with the idea of going gung-ho into Eggman's strong hold and dragging the bastard out by his mustache, but I decided against it in the end.

I used the terminal in my home to take the aptitude tests and I waited for the results. While I waited, I practiced using my abilities more in the privacy of my own home. I was getting good at moving things gracefully now. I was even starting to get the hang of moving things on a molecular level. It was still hard, but I had started to try studying chemistry in order to better understand what needed to happen to achieve any results. I was able to make a few drops of water after an entire day's worth of work, but it left me exhausted. I had a long way to go on that front.

I also spent my time researching the Freedom Fighters. It had grown substantially in the last few years, but I suppose being in a war will do that to a mostly military organization. It was now better organized and much bigger than ever before. It spent a bulk of its time carrying out operations around the globe now that Nicole had city-wide defense taken care of. Some of the actions taken fighting off the Dark Legion in Downunda were truly impressive.

I received my results a few days later and discovered that I was wanted in the "Special Projects" division. There was a suspicious lack of information as to what that was, just information about pay and benefits and a note at the bottom that said if I was interested to show up for further testing at a certain time. I was excited by the prospect. Ivan had never gotten to any stage where further testing was required. His aptitude scores showed that he was utterly average in just about every area. I guess living most of your formative years as a robot slave doesn't exactly build your skills in any meaningful way.

I laundered my jeans and blue hoodie the day of the testing. They were starting to get threadbare. I decided that I'd need to get new clothing with my sign on bonus. The bus ride across town was torture for me. I kept swinging between excitement that I was going to kick ass at the testing and utter despair as I felt sure I would choke and would be unceremoniously kicked out. My thoughts were filled with how to best use my powers. How much to use them. Did I want to oust myself right then and there and let the military decide how to best use me? Or to I keep them to myself and decide for myself when would be a good time to expose my usefulness? As the bus came to my stop, I made the decision to only use my power enough to give me an edge, and I would try to be as subtle as possible when using them.

I arrived at the location mentioned in the message. It was a large, brick warehouse on the border of what looked to be a forest. I thought I saw something like an obstacle course behind the warehouse. As I approached the building, a chipmunk wearing fatigues and a beret opened the door and waved a hand to usher me inside. I felt a strange tremor of fear run through my body as I quickened my pace and stepped inside.

I was led down a long hallway, hanging lamps barely illuminated the space. My footsteps echoed on the concrete floors and off the flimsy drywall surrounding me; someone had built this place in a hurry. The chipmunk walked ahead of me, a little more relaxed than his uniform would have otherwise suggested. I closed my eyes and tried to feel my surroundings. I had been toying with the concept of remote viewing the night before and tried to apply it now.

It wasn't as though I could actually _see_ anything. It was more of an intuition. I could hear heartbeats. More of them, ahead of us where we were walking towards. I could sense just how far my footsteps penetrated the thin walls and reverberated in the rooms beyond them. Most of these doors we were passing were empty rooms. A few, I sensed, contained desks and chairs. Back to the heart beats. There were a little over a dozen in the warehouse. Before I could make any deductions based on what I'd sensed, the chipmunk I was following stopped in front of me.

"Right in here, Mr. Lanyang." He said, opening a door to my left.

I saw nine people sitting in the room. Judging by the way that some of them were fidgeting nervously and others were sitting in exaggeratedly relaxed posture, I concluded that these were other candidates awaiting testing. All their eyes shot to me as we entered the room.

"Alright," the chipmunk said, "that's ten. We're all here." He closed the door behind him.

The room was absolutely bare except for a dozen folding chairs and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. I took a seat and paid attention to the chipmunk in the army fatigues.

"Hello and welcome to Special Projects orientation. I am Agent Niles. If any of you feel like you may be in the wrong place, I invite you to leave now."

A twitchy looking mouse took a deep breath and, losing some internal struggle, quickly got to his feet and headed for the door. Agent Niles politely opened it for him. He closed the door and looked to the rest of us.

"Now I know what you're thinking. That mouse is a coward. But I need to make it very clear that Spec-Pro is the most dangerous branch of the Freedom Fighters. I don't think any less of him for choosing to opt out now. At any point during the following testing, you are free to leave. I encourage it. If you're not committed, one hundred percent, you should leave now."

Nervous shifting surrounded me. No one else got up, but it was clear that it was on everyone's mind. Even mine. Niles looked around the room and cleared his throat.

"I'm sure some of you are familiar with what Spec-Pro is. For the uninitiated, allow me to fill you in. Special Projects is the elite strike force in the Freedom Fighter military force. When Spec-Pro isn't infiltrating enemy strong holds or engaging in acts of sabotage, they're the back-up force for the Elites, by which I mean, Princess Sally Acorn and her inner circle, including Sonic the Hedgehog." A few excited smiles passed on the faces of a few others in the room. They quickly faded.

"Make no mistake. You're not here for glory. You're not here for a paycheck. You're not here to make a name for yourself. And goddammit, you're _not here to meet your childhood hero._ " He slammed his hand on the wall, his face stern. What I thought was silence before faded into the kind of quiet only heard in deep space. I'm certain that some in the room were holding their breath.

"You're here to save those who need saving and help us gain the upper hand against the enemies of New Mobotropolis, whoever they might be."

I felt a strange feeling of responsibility fall on my shoulders at that moment. A weight that I wasn't certain I could bear, but one that I wanted desperately.

"Over the next few hours, you're going to be assessed in several physical examinations. We've already compiled extensive backgrounds on all of you present and your assessment scores. I want to assure you that the only reason you are here is because you are uniquely qualified to be here. But some people crack under pressure. Some people can't handle stress. Some people look great on paper but fall to pieces so fast their squad-mates get hit by the shrapnel."

A little bit of laughter.

"I wish I could say that was a joke, but a few years back we had a candidate freeze up during a live grenade test."

Silence again. Agent Niles laughed.

"That _was_ a joke," he laughed, "None of you are going anywhere near explosives until you've passed these tests. Your first test awaits you outside. Some of you may have noticed the obstacle course on your way in, we'll be heading there. Please follow me."

We got up and followed him single file back down the hallway. I noticed that not all of the heartbeats I'd sensed before were in our group. There were still heartbeats going from further in the warehouse. I wondered who they belonged to.

The obstacle course ran along the side of the warehouse and rounded the corner to the back. There were tires on the ground, a rock climbing wall, and a mud pit. It seemed like standard affair.

"Welcome to the course. You're tasked with getting to the other end in under three minutes. No cheating. No going around. This isn't a test of your wits, this is a test of your physical aptitude. When I call your name, you step up to the line, "he nudged a white line with his foot, "and on my mark you start running, following the path. Any questions? No? Good. Bachman, Kline."

A tan-furred squirrel stepped forward. He was grinning ear to ear, eyes set to the challenge before him. He definitely seemed confident. He crouched into a running posture and waited.

"Go." Niles said and Kline took off like a shot. He was _fast_. And I've seen Sonic in action before. I watched him nimbly high-step through the tires, legs pumping up and down like pistons. He got through the tires and sped towards the rock wall. He didn't slow down. Instead, he leapt towards the wall and planted his foot against it and kicked down. He took three steps up the wall before he lost his momentum. He caught his foot on a rock and jumped up to grab another rock. He was ten feet, twenty feet, forty feet high in a matter of seconds. I lost sight of him after he crested the top and hopped down. A few seconds later I caught a flash of muddy fur as he rounded the corner of the course and disappeared behind the warehouse.

After a couple of minutes, Niles cleared his throat.

"Franz, Sarah."

A skunk sauntered up to the starting line. She had a punk-rock vibe to her. She was dressed in a sleeveless jacket covered in pins and spikes. She had several piercings in each ear and one in her right eyebrow. She cracked her neck and spat out her gum and got in a ready posture. I was waiting for Kline to reappear on the other side of the warehouse when Agent Niles said, "Go." Sarah took off, much slower than Kline, but with just as much determination.

I waited my turn. After I saw a mud-covered black and white tail round the corner of the warehouse, I heard my name called.

My heart was beating hard in my chest. I had never been physically fit before, so competing in any sort of athletic event was all new to me. I suddenly started worrying about using my power. If I used too much it would arouse suspicion. But if I used too little, I was sure I would fail the test. I tried to imagine what I would feel like as I hit the sweet spot in my control but was interrupted by Agent Niles.

"Go."

I took off. I took a deep breath as I arrived at the tires. I rocked my weight back and forth as I landed each of my steps in the dead center of each tire. I felt like I was going too slow as I started my approach of the rock wall. I used my power to lift some of the weight of my body and felt my legs push my lighter body faster. It was amazing how quickly I could move without the full weight of my body holding me down.

I approached the wall and leapt at it. I was in the air before I realized that I was still at a lower weight. I leapt almost ten feet into the air and hit the wall harder than I had prepared for. I scrambled for a rock and caught hold of it in my left hand. I leapt from rock to rock and scaled the wall while I tried to hide my embarrassment. That was careless and stupid of me. Leaping that high was going to raise a few eyebrows.

I got to the top of the wall and saw a rope dangling down on the other side of the wall. I grabbed it and started to lower myself down. I looked around me and couldn't see anyone watching me. I flirted with the idea of letting go and floating down to the ground, but I held back. I was still supporting half my weight, so I just climbed down as fast as my arms could go. Rappelling down should eat up my hands and I didn't want to have to explain why I didn't have rope burns on my hands later.

As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ran towards the mud pit. There was a lattice of barbed wire suspended two feet above the pit. I threw myself head first into the mud. I started wriggling forward as quickly as I could and suddenly felt something pulling on my spine. I let out a yelp and turned around to see my bushy tail had caught on one of the barbs. I rolled and dislodged it and then forced it down, dragging in the mud. I wasn't looking forward to washing that later.

I got to the end of the mud pit and stood up, spitting mud onto the ground as I started running again. I got to the corner of the warehouse and rounded it. I saw a goat in fatigues standing in front of an open door. He gestured for me to go inside. I entered and immediately felt a bag pulled over my head and my legs were swept out from under me. Two sets of hands grabbed my arms and I felt something hard press into the back of my head.

"Don't make a sound or you're dead." Someone hissed into my ear.

Those soldiers that had ambushed me had no idea how lucky they were. In my adrenaline filled state, I almost tore them apart. But the moment I felt something press against my head, I felt time slow down. I became intensely aware of everything happening around me and in the space of two seconds I knew what was going on.

In each of the empty rooms I'd sensed earlier, there was a chair and some rope. Two of them already housed Kline and Sarah, along with two other pairs of soldiers. I could pick up snippets of their conversation.

"Your mother's name. You can tell me your mother's name or you can tell me which leg you like the least."

"Sure, he's in pain right now, so feel good about yourself for that for as long as you can."

They were being interrogated. I felt certain that this was part of the test. In fact, it would be stupid to suspect otherwise, really. That, in itself, might be the test. I'd see where it would go.

As for the two soldiers standing beside me, I could feel their steady heart beats, elevated slightly. They were tense, ready for me to struggle or break free. The gun they held to the back of my head was empty. A dummy. Of course, that would be easy to deduce on its own, since it was against the code of ethics to utilize fire arms outside of a military engagement. Essentially, unless we were engaged on the battlefield, we didn't use guns outside of a firing range. Even then, historically, Mobians had hated firearms. They were the weapons that the Overlanders had used in that war long ago. They were also used by Eggman. We didn't use firearms, as a matter of principle. I thought briefly how strange it was that we were engaged in a war where we didn't match arms with the enemy. And with that thought, I felt time resume to normal flow. Now that I knew I wasn't in any real danger, I felt myself relax a little and let myself be roughly led to a room.

They threw me down roughly into a chair. I quickly tried to stand up; that's what they'd expect of me. I felt hands shove me back down and another pair of hands grab my wrists and start tying them to the back of the chair. I put on a show of struggling. I felt a blow land on top of my head. I saw stars for a moment and then they cleared. I sensed out in the other rooms. Kline was being shoved onto his back, still tied to the chair. Sarah was being slapped. She laughed and spit at the soldier's shoe. I guess hitting was allowed.

I was suddenly staring at a blinding light. I wondered, momentarily, what room I was sensing before I realized that I was staring at a light in the room I was seated in. They had just removed the bag over my head. The two soldiers stood before me. Neither one of them had any name on their uniform nor any rank or insignia. One was a badger, large and burly with a slight underbite. Combined with his scowl, it gave him a distinctly uneducated look. The other was a fox, grinning ear to ear, brandishing the gun like it was a toy.

"Let's get this over with. The sooner you tell us what we want, the sooner we let you walk." The fox said, brushing the gun against his cheek. I rolled my eyes.

"So this is, what? A mock interrogation. You're going to ask me simple questions and I'm supposed to not answer them? Right?" The badger punched me in the stomach.

"Almost. Only it's not a _mock_ interrogation." The fox said, smiling wickedly. "You keep up with that attitude and you're going to catch a bullet."

"Alright," I said, sucking in air, "Let's begin. What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with something simple." The badger said. "Your mother's name."

"How's that supposed to help… what are you supposed to be? Terrorists?" I asked. The badger took a swing at my head. I tried putting up a flimsy shield. It shattered quickly, but it took the brunt of the blow. My head was still ringing, but I took satisfaction watching the badger shake his hand a little, trying to shake off the hurt.

"We just want to get acquainted before we turn the screws. Maybe you don't know the name of your instructor, so we're starting with someone near and dear to you to help you jog your memory. Mother's name."

"Magic word?" I asked. The fox pointed the gun at my left eye.

"Please." He said, cocking the gun.

I knew that the gun was empty. I knew that I wasn't in any real danger. But I still felt my mouth go dry as I stared down the barrel. I swallowed hard.

"Sally Acorn." I said. I felt a hand on my chest and saw the world toppling over. I landed hard on my back, my elbows smacking into the concrete floor. My head hit the floor hard enough to make my vision swim.

"See, that kind of attitude is gonna get you hurt, man." The fox said. "Mother's name. Please."

"I never had a mother." This was technically true and hoped it wouldn't count against me.

"Hugo, lift him up again. I wanna push him down this time." The fox said.

The badger, Hugo I presumed, smirked and grabbed the front of my hoodie and pulled me back on all four of my chair legs. Just as I was right side up, I took advantage of the fact that my legs weren't tied down. I lurched forward, standing up quickly and head-butted Hugo. I was aiming for his nose, but he pulled back, so I landed my blow under his chin. He reeled back in surprise and pain. I started rushing the door. The fox jumped in front of me and leveled the gun at me.

"Ah ah ah!" He said, "You don't get to leave just yet."

"Or what?" I asked. "You're going to shoot me with an unloaded gun?"

The fox's face fell. "Wha-?"

"You cocked it," I lied, "From that close I could see that nothing entered the chamber. That was probably a mistake."

"Buh." The fox started. The badger had stopped moving, looking solely at the gun.

"Also, the way you kept waving it around. Either you were really stupid and don't know gun safety, ergo, you're not a real legitimate threat, or you know gun safety but know that the gun isn't loaded so it's not dangerous. Either way, not going to be threatened by an empty gun."

The badger started laughing. "He got your number Corey."

"Oh, you're one to talk." I said, turning around. "I assume you tied these knots? They're not very good. If I just do this…" I used my power to loosen the knots while twisting my wrists in a contorted kind of way as misdirection. The ropes fell away, the chair hit the ground, free from my body.

The fox looked at Hugo who was dumbfounded. He then looked up to a corner of the room. There was a camera there. How had I missed that?

"Is that good enough?" He asked. A voice responded in his ear-piece.

"Alright, got it." He said, nodding towards Hugo who started moving towards me.

"Come with us please." The fox said, and he led the way down the hallway. I heard shuffling and muffled yelling behind me. It sounded as though someone else had just finished the obstacle course.

I was led into a large room with pads on the floor. This room was better lit than all the others. The fox and Hugo entered the room with me and I saw Sarah lying on the padded floor, face down. Two other soldiers in uniform were standing at the far end of the room, both looked like they'd been badly beaten.

"Oy, what happened to her?" Hugo asked.

One of the beaten soldiers, an otter with a black eye and a bloody nose, looked at us.

"She, um. She passed." He said. His companion, a mouse who was holding a rag to the side of his head chimed in.

"Stood up and slammed herself backwards onto the ground. Broke the chair and then started going berserk on us. Had to use the tranquilizers they'd given us to get her to stop."

The fox and Hugo started laughing.

"Yeeeah… you laugh now. Just be hoping that neither one of you gets paired with her for the next round."

The fox stopped laughing, but Hugo only laughed harder.

"Will she even _be_ in the next round?" The fox asked.

"Should be fine." The otter said. "That being said, I'm not going to cry if she's still out cold by the time Niles gets here. As far as I'm concerned, she already passed the next round, too."

There was, unsurprisingly, very little to do while we waited for the other candidates to show up. The room was empty except for the mats on the floor, and the soldiers weren't much for conversation. At least, not with us. I assumed that they'd been given orders to not talk with us. Sarah stayed out cold for another hour, and it took another hour after that before she was lucid enough to talk. The moment she could stand, she started walking quickly around the room. The others were confused, but I could tell she was trying to sweat out whatever was in her system faster.

Kline arrived into the room thirty minutes after I did, but didn't want to talk. He closed his eyes and did some stretching before settling down and meditating for the rest of the time. A black squirrel entered in shortly after him, grinning ear to ear. He introduced himself as Darx Sinrili and he seemed very pleased with himself. He told me that he'd known that the gun was empty from the moment he heard them cock it. He claimed that he knew the difference between an empty gun being cocked and one with a bullet loading into the chamber. "The sounds are similar to most people, but they're different to me. Metal on metal. It's like a symphony." From what I gathered listening to his soldier escorts, he'd somehow wriggled out of his restraints, wrestled the gun out of the soldier's hands, and took it apart in just a few seconds.

"I really _am_ sorry about your fingers!" He shouted at one of his soldier escorts. The soldier just glared back at him, cradling his injured hand.

A pig was the next to show up. He came in around the time that Sarah was just waking up. Higgs was his name. He never told me his last name. Apparently he took down a wall to get out of the room. Just got up, barreled down his escorts and smashed through the drywall. He was still pretty dusty as he sat himself down next to Darx and me.

After another hour passed, a coyote girl showed up, skipping into the room. Only one of her escorts entered in after her. He looked shell-shocked.

"Hi, I'm Hailey. What's your name?" She asked all of us. She seemed extremely bubbly and honestly, she frightened me a little. We told her our names.

"How'd you win?" Higgs asked.

"I made one of the guards go to sleep." She giggled. I glanced over towards soldier escorts. They were talking in hushed tones while looking over at Hailey.

"You didn't… You didn't kill him, did you?" I asked. She giggled again.

"No, silly, I told you. I made him go to _sleep_. The other one tapped out, so I let go." I felt like this brought up more questions than answers.

I was about to continue my questioning when I saw the escorts all snap to attention. Agent Niles had just walked into the room. He moved to the center of the room and looked expectantly at all of us. We all scrambled to our feet and stood at attention, Sarah wobbling just a little.

"Congratulations on making it this far. As all of you have deduced, I'm sure, your first half of testing dealt with mental prowess in a state of exhaustion and stress. In order to pass, you needed to either overpower the guards or rationally assess the threat. And you all passed. Granted, _some_ of you," he looked pointedly at Higgs who snorted quietly, "were a little less… _traditional_ in your approach." Higgs looked like he was trying hard not to smile.

"Be that as it may, your second half of testing is much more forward and possibly less intense than your previous test. You simply have to overcome one of these Spec-Pro agents you see here." He turned to face the escorts. Surprise flashed on his face briefly as he noticed the state of some of his soldiers.

"Good god. Mills! Hood! Get yourselves some medical attention." Sarah's otter and mouse saluted and rushed out of the room, keeping an eye on the skunk as they left.

" _These_ Spec-Pro agents you see here have been trained in hand-to-hand combat. In your duties, you're going to come across situations where you have to resort to combat without any weapons. In those situations, you're expected to be able to overcome any opponent using only what is at your disposal. You must take down your opponent with your bare hands. The first to hit the mat is the loser. Miss Franz, you may go last in your condition." He added to Sarah.

"Piss off." She said, rolling her eyes. Niles cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow. Sarah straightened up a little, "Sorry, sir. I meant to say, 'That won't be necessary.'" Niles nodded.

We went in the same order we ran in the obstacle course. Kline was paired with Hugo, the burly badger from my interrogation. Kline's speed was a huge advantage over Hugo's slow blows. Hugo wore himself out trying to land blows on Kline while Kline kept landing punches and kicks all over. Eventually, Kline caught Hugo with a vicious uppercut and Hugo landed hard on his backside, shaking his head. Niles called it and Kline was escorted out of the room, victorious.

Sarah went next. She got paired with a large Doberman. He seemed apprehensive of the skunk. He'd seen what she'd done to her escorts. The fight opened and Sarah spun around, disorienting the dog with her large tail. He was flinching when she finished her spin with a roundhouse kick to the side of his head. Blinded and now taking a kick to the head, the dog staggered. She then rushed towards him, screaming. He blocked the first to blows to his face, but then she landed a heavy kick to his stomach. He doubled over as she brought her knee up into his nose. Niles called it right there, as Sarah was moving to keep on the attack.

"Roberts, you're excused as well." The Doberman was whimpering as he left the room with Sarah. Sarah patted him on the back as they left. "Hey, come on, it's not _that_ bad."

I was up next. I was paired with Corey, the fox from my interrogation group. I sized him up. He was lanky, a few inches taller than I was. He got into a fighting stance as it dawned on me that I didn't really know much about fighting. I _did_ , however, know how to manipulate time. I took a deep breath and tried to recreate what I'd done a few hours earlier when the bag was placed over my head. Time slowed down right as Corey took a chop towards my neck.

I put my hands up into what I hoped would be a fighting stance and launched a blow to his outstretched arm, just behind the elbow. I sped up time briefly as his body suddenly changed direction from my blow. He took the momentum his arm had just received and started for a roundhouse kick. I slowed time back down and side-stepped the kick, and shot my own leg into the back of the knee that was supporting his weight through his kick. He landed on his knee and hand, barely keeping himself from landing flat on his back while I leapt back, bouncing a little on my toes. He got up and started rushing towards me. His rush slowed to a crawl as I ducked under his outstretched arm, shot two quick punches to his ribs, and grabbed his right leg and pulled up. He flipped up and landed flat on his stomach, the wind knocked from his lungs. I put my foot on his back as Niles called the match. I was allowed to leave.

As I entered the hallway, I saw a soldier standing near the doorway. She was a wolf with light grey fur and icy blue eyes. I felt a hitch in my step as she made eye contact with me. Her expression was one of boredom and impatience as she watched me walk towards her.

"You're instructed to head back home and wait for more orders. Do not discuss the details of what happened here today." She said in a very bored tone. I got the impression that she got the boring job of the day and she knew it. I opened my mouth to speak but couldn't find any words to say. She raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to talk. I hesitated then closed my mouth. She rolled her eyes and gestured towards the door.

I had qualified for the most specialized role in the military today. I had survived the obstacle course, a mock interrogation, and won the first fight I'd ever been in. I should've been thinking about that victory all night. I should've been thinking about what was coming next. I should've been thinking about all of the responsibilities and dangers that were coming my way very soon. But all I could think about on the bus ride home, as I scrubbed the mud out of my fur, and as I tried to relax in bed that night, were those piercing, frosty blue eyes boring into my soul.


	6. 005 - This Was How I Learned Her Name

_0045– This Was How I Learned Her Name_

The next few weeks were a blur. Out of the ten candidates for Spec-Pro, only five remained. Darx, Kline, Sarah, Hailey, and I were all shipped out to a remote training facility where we were taught everything we'd need to know about what our new job entailed. Those three weeks were the hardest I'd ever faced, but they weren't difficult for me like they were for the rest of them. I spent most of my time learning how to meter out my ability. I discovered, quite by accident, that my eyes glowed a faint aquamarine color whenever I used any of my power. So I developed a habit of drooping my eyelids a little to counteract the glow whenever I needed to use my power, or close my eyes completely.

The training was a series of wilderness survival tests, endurance tests, stress and mental agility tests, and pretty much every other thing that the bastards who ran Spec-Pro could throw at us to make us quit. No one did. We learned the ins and outs of the infantry robots used by Doctor Eggman, the ubiquitous Egg-Mech, and how to disable them. Darx turned out to be a savant at this. He broke all of the records for disabling or dismantling the machinery. Even I couldn't beat him. At least, not without pausing time to a near stand-still to keep up, and I didn't want to have to resort to that. I didn't want to be the best. I just wanted to be useful.

At the end of three weeks, we were given a week off before we'd be getting our first assignment. At the end of that week off, there was some sort of gala or event being held in one of the ballrooms in the royal palace. This was, as I was told, a congratulations ceremony for the new Spec-Pro recruits. Or, that's what it was officially, anyways. The truth was that one of the people in charge had an anniversary right around the time when the annual recruitment took place. This was a way to have a large, formal party for themselves and get the military to foot the bill.

I wasn't worried about the party itself, but I was worrying about the formal aspects of it. As it was, I hadn't received my first paycheck yet, so aside from the issued combat fatigues I'd been assigned at the beginning of training, I was still down to a blue hoodie and blue jeans. I had thought of a half dozen different ideas to come up with formal attire before the party, but most of them involved breaking the law. I toyed with the idea of making a suit from scratch, but I still hadn't gotten the hang of molecular fusion yet. As of that moment, the best that I'd come up with was what I was calling 'Operation Emperor'. The basic idea was that I'd implant the idea that I was wearing clothes into everyone's mind while I attended the ball naked. The two major flaws with that was the intrinsic moral debate on whether or not controlling people's minds was defensible in such a situation. The second was that I had never even tried to do something like that. I wasn't sure if astral projection was even an ability that I had access to.

As I sat on my couch, musing the options I had left to me the day before the party, I found myself thinking out loud.

"I wonder if a bank would notice a few Mobiums missing."

"I'll just pretend that I didn't hear that, Tekk." A voice sounded from my walls.

I bolted upright, onto my feet, head snapping back and forth. No one was there. I sensed around me and found only myself and the subtle, almost imperceptible hum of the nanites that formed my house.

"Hello?" I asked the air.

Suddenly, I saw a person materializing out of thin air. She shimmered and waved a little, and I realized that she was being projected from the nanites all around me. She was an attractive looking lynx with dark hair and a purple slip of a dress. She stood, a few inches off the ground, in the middle of my living room, regarding me with a mix of bemusement and seriousness.

"Grand larceny is a serious crime, and that wouldn't do for my new recruit for Spec-Pro, Tekk _Ivan_ Lanyang." She smirked. Her emphasis on 'Ivan' made me think she knew more than I would've liked.

"Who are you?" I asked, trying to pinpoint her location using my power. But it was no use. As far as I could sense, she wasn't transmitting from anywhere specifically. She looked at me with a frank expression on her face until I understood.

"You… must be… Nicole then." I said slowly.

"In the flesh." She giggled.

"Hmm…" I walked around her, eyeing her up and down. She did an elegant pirouette and stared back at me.

"Like what you see?" She asked, flirtatiously.

I didn't like admitting to myself that I _did_. Not because she wasn't attractive, but because she wasn't actually _there._ And because of how quickly I felt myself let my guard down around her. Here was someone who ran the city itself who knew _something_ about who I really was; who I used to be. And I couldn't help but trust her.

"Depends. What is it that I'm seeing?"

"This is just a hologram projection." She waved a hand in my face. It passed through without even the air moving around her.

"But what you're seeing is the face I wear when I need to talk to people. And I need to talk to you, Tekk." Her face hardened a little. It was time to get down to business.

"Yeah, about that, how _do_ you know who I am?" I asked.

"Please…" she said condescendingly, "I'm an artificial intelligence. I wouldn't be very good at my job if I wasn't _intelligent_." She pulled up a low-resolution video on my display screen built in the wall.

"About five weeks ago I detected a fast-moving object briefly entering a low-orbit before dropping." I saw a blur of orange and blue, fuzzy and pixelated, falling from the sky. "My first instinct was a missile. I've dealt with nuclear weapons before and I wasn't going to let anything happen to my city. But then my sensors indicated that the mass was far too mobile and far too small to be a weapon, or at least, any weapon I had ever encountered. Then, I watched it as it impossibly slowed its velocity before touching down in a forest about sixty miles east of here. This piqued my interest." She cocked an eyebrow at me.

"Once I discovered that this fast-flying object was alive, I started my research. As you got closer to the city I was able to see that you weren't of a species that _should_ be able to fly. Not that this has much weight here on Mobius, but it does at least narrow down the field a bit. I try to keep track of any being with extraordinary talents here in the city. And you are definitely extraordinary."

"You entered the east gate a few days after I first detected you and I was able to run a facial recognition scan. It came back with only partial matches. The likeliest candidate was one Ivan Romanof, but he was listed as deceased. But even I had to admit that there was a resemblance between you two, so I thought, maybe a brother that somehow was never documented? So I backtracked your movement to see where you came from via satellite imaging. I want to mention that this process took days for me to complete. Or, rather, days for _me_. It was _seconds_ to you."

"Now you're just gloating." I said, crossing my arms. She giggled.

"I am. Anyways, I watched your trek in reverse and noticed that you never ate. You stopped by a pond once, but never drank anything. I followed you all the way past the ruins of Knothole and into a quarry which was the last known resting place of our friend Ivan. I'll admit that I couldn't see where you came from exactly, the quality isn't that good, but I had a hunch, and I went with it. I created you a citizenship registry and pushed it to the top of the priority, rewriting your info as you came up with now, I've gotten enough genetic sampling to verify that you are the late Ivan Romanof. I got you assigned to a house out here, where there aren't many people living yet, to give you the privacy you desired, and I made sure that Spec-Pro thought that you were just the _best_ candidate to bring in for the physical testing. "

"You've been-"

"Rigging everything for you, yes." She smiled politely. "As far as I can tell from my scans, you've got incredible abilities, but you're keeping them to yourself. It's not my place to ask why, but I want you to know that I have a very close eye on you. Know one else knows about you and I am very discrete. So unless you turn to a life of crime…" there was a pregnant pause, "you don't have to worry."

"So, you just showed up to warn me against robbing a bank?" I asked.

"Well, no." She said. "I mean, yes, if you're actually considering it. Seriously, don't rob a bank. But, I mean, I wanted to actually meet you. See, I think that you've got the potential to help a lot of people, and I think you should probably know who's on your side. I also wanted to ask your permission about something."

"Permission for what?"

"Well, there's this extremely clever scientist-slash-inventor who I think could benefit immensely from your collaboration. He doesn't know about you yet, but he might be able to make sense about what you are exactly and you might be able to help him make a breakthrough with a problem he's been struggling with."

"Who is this scientist exactly?"

"Miles Prower, but his friends call him 'Tails'."

Meet Tails? _The_ Tails? Sonic the Hedgehog's best friend and one of the foremost minds on the subject of chaos energy? I would've given my left arm for the opportunity. I almost agreed immediately, but then I paused.

"... Help me out with my current dress party emergency, and it's a deal."

"Seriously? Is that all?" Nicole laughed.

"Yes…" I said, a little sheepishly.

"I can help you, no problem." She said, "Just stand still, arms out, like this please. Thank you."

She walked around me, examining my body. "Hmmm… Lose the jacket."

"I- What?" I stammered.

"The jacket. Take it off. I can't get a good measurement for the shirt and jacket with the hoodie on."

"If you ask me to take my pants off next…" I said, as I pulled the jacket over my head. I stuck my arms back out like before and tried to ignore the attractive woman who was examining my bare chest. I did my best to not blush.

"I don't need you pants to come off, relax. Though I do need your shoes to come off, too. It'll make things easier." I started to kick off my shoes when she said, "Besides, if I wanted to see anything… _interesting_ … I'd just review the footage I have of you bathing." I gulped and felt warmth spread across my face.

"I think I've got it. Keep holding that pose, please." Nicole said, disappearing. "And be advised, this might feel strange… I've not actually done this before…"

"What?" I asked, just as the floor began to creep up my legs.

The wood coloring faded into a glistening steel color as it became fluid and flowed up under my pants. It felt cold, but strangely dry. In a few moments my body was completely covered in cold, steely nanites. Then they started to vibrate and shift. I watched them as they changed color and began to take on a more specific form. It was like watching an image render in real time. First, I was a solid white, then a layer of black covered that. I watched and felt as the nanites formed themselves to imitate fabric. At first it was coarse, like burlap, then slowly, the threads became finer and softer, until I was wearing something that felt like silk. Jacket formed itself over the white shirt. I felt the same process happening under my blue jeans. My feet were covered in a hard pseudo-leather that formed itself into two shiny shoes. Soon, I was wearing an entire tuxedo, perfectly fit to my body.

Nicole reappeared in front of me.

"Looks good. Though, I think the blue jeans need to go." I looked down and saw that I was still wearing the jeans over the tuxedo slacks.

"You're probably right."

"One more thing. Make sure you get back home before midnight, the night of the party."

"Why's that? Do these nanites turn into a pumpkin or something?"

"No. You just have a meeting with Tails the morning after, you'll want your sleep. That's all." She disappeared again. I went upstairs to examine my new clothes.

As I looked at the figure I cut in the mirror, two things crossed my mind. First was that I was definitely going to need to buy a new wardrobe with my first paycheck. The second was that I was already making acquaintances with the people who held the most sway in New Mobotropolis. I was on a first name basis with Nicole, her threat to oust me notwithstanding, and soon I'd be meeting Tails. It was exciting. And the only thing I had to do was promise not to be some sort of super villain. Sounded easy enough.

The party was held in one of the ballrooms at the royal palace. I found this to be something of a misnomer, as the official government of New Mobotropolis was more a parliamentary process than a monarchy anymore, and there wasn't much stock in the royal bloodline anymore. Princess Acorn kept the title but little else, and her brother had more or less eschewed his royal title. I was starting to see that the royal family was more of a family of celebrities than any actual ruling power, and that seemed fine to them.

The palace itself was surrounded by a large garden on one side and woods on the other. As I walked in the moonlight, in warm summer air, I wondered briefly if these were actual plants or nanite recreations. The outside of the ballroom was enormous. Large windows ran from the floor to the ceiling, revealing an ornate marble interior, gilded in gold and royal red. Warm light poured from the windows and out into the courtyard, the gardens, and splashed against the outermost trees of the woods. On a terrace above, I could see party-goers talking and laughing. Nicole had really outdone herself to create this place. This thought suddenly reminded me that Nicole was watching me, probably even as I approached the ballroom.

That made it all the more embarrassing when I couldn't find the entrance. I had arrived alone and just a little late. As I got close to what I thought was an entrance, I realized to my chagrin, that it was just a full-length window. I tried to play off my mistake by examining some rose bushes near the window, to make it seem like my lonely walk towards (what was now very clearly) a window had been to look at the foliage. I nodded at the bush, as though I agreed with its general placement and started to walk around the building, looking for an entrance.

Towards the woods wouldn't be a likely entrance, so I headed towards the garden. Part of me was desperately trying to find a door, but another part of me was enjoying the serenity of the plant life around me. Stone benches were set around the garden, all facing a central fountain. Large hedges grew up over an almost invisible steel gate and it made me feel walled in by greenery. Parts of the garden were sectioned off by shrubbery and I thought I saw a gazebo behind a green archway. As I passed by the archway, I heard two voices, a man and a woman's.

"Come on, Marsh. We're all alone out here. Everyone's inside, what are you afraid of?" The man's voice said. It was slurred and just a little slow. He sounded drunk.

"I'm not _afraid_ , I don't _want_ to." The woman said back, sounding irate.

I slowed down and peered around the shrubbery to see a wolf being grabbed at by a burly looking skunk, he was a full head taller than her.

"Let go of me, Harry." She said, flashing icy blue eyes at the skunk. And then I realized that I had seen her before. She was the wolf who I had seen as I was leaving the physical exam. She seemed to be having trouble with her date, as she pulled away from his grip.

"Oh, you like it, though, I can tell." Harry slurred, his face close to hers. His eyes were drooped in what I'm sure he thought was a sultry expression. She tried to pull back.

"Dammit, Harry, if you don't let go of me, I'll-"

"You won't do nothing. Come here, give me a kiss."

I stepped around the shrubbery.

"Hey, she said no." I said clearly. Harry was startled to see me, but the wolf just glared at me, annoyed.

"Thank you for your concern, but I've got this handled." She said, trying to pull free from Harry's grip. I hesitated.

"Are… Are you sure?" I asked.

"She said she's fine, so get lost." Harry said, standing up. I thought of walking away. This wasn't any of my business, but I couldn't let this go. Nicole was watching and I was supposed to be a hero, wasn't I? Heroes don't walk away from these kinds of things.

"She said to let her go, so _let her go_." I said, taking a step closer.

"Oh for the love of…" The wolf said, the irritation plain on her face. Harry let her go, but started walking towards me, stumbling a little as he stepped down off the gazebo.

"What's it to you?" He asked, puffing up his chest. "Wait, no, I know you… You're that squirrely guy from the physical testing. The one who dropped Corey in like, three shots."

"Uh, fox, but yeah. That's me. Don't make me do the same to you. Just leave the lady alone."

He laughed. "Corey is a wuss. He gets knocked down by a stiff breeze. Don't get all high and mighty because you made it into Spec-Pro. You don't have what it takes to go toe to toe with me, alright? So just go back inside and leave us alone." He gave me a shove. I stumbled backwards a little.

"Better idea, we all three of us go inside, and you give the lady the space she wants."

"Can't you take a hint, scrub? Get lost before I make you lost." He said, getting close to my face. I could smell alcohol on his breath. He gave me another shove, this time, I leaned into it, stopping myself from staggering backwards. I glared into his eyes.

"This isn't happening…" The wolf said, pinching the bridge of her nose in irritation.

"Oh… It's happening alright." Harry said, as I continued to stare him down. Harry rose his right arm for a haymaker. I ducked under his arm as it flew over my head. I sidestepped quickly behind him, grabbing his outstretched arm with my right hand and grabbing his jaw with my left. I planted my left foot behind his right and pulled him down. His foot caught mine as he tried to step back and he landed hard on his back, his arm now secure under mine. I kneeled down on his side and neck, straddling his arm. He started yelling and cursing.

"Sorry to have to do this Harry." I said, as I put my elbow on his neck, blocking his jugular. With a few moments of pressure he'd be out cold. I listened intensely for his heartbeat so I didn't kill him. In a few seconds, he stopped struggling so hard, a few more and his eyes closed. His heartbeat dropped and I let go of him. He fell limply to the ground and I could hear his heavy breathing. Good. I hadn't killed him.

I turned to the wolf in the gazebo, but she'd apparently fled inside when Harry threw his punch. I stood up and straightened my tux and looked around nervously. No one else was out in the garden. I walked briskly towards the building and found the entrance.

Inside the party was in full swing, with the dance floor open and couples swaying to the music of the band playing in the corner. With everyone in dresses and suits it felt as though I'd stepped into a fairy tale. Suddenly, the smell of food wafted towards me. It'd been a week since I'd eaten anything and old habits die hard. I found my way to the buffet to see what they had. I looked over the entrees provided, but stopped at the appetizers. There was a large setting of cocktail shrimp, my favorite food, and since it was a serve-yourself affair, I loaded up my plate with more than was probably appropriate.

I looked out into the crowd as I tried to find a place to sit down and eat my mountain of shrimp. I saw Hailey in a ridiculously frilly pink dress, grinning from ear to ear as she talked to Sarah, who was wearing a form-fitting tuxedo. Sarah seemed miserable in her surroundings. She seemed more like the type who preferred a mosh pit over a classy ball.

In a far corner I saw a table with only one occupant so I started for it. Halfway there I discovered the occupant was the wolf. She looked stunning in a black dress which matched her hair, done up in an elaborate bun. The gorgeous, pale grey fur stood highlighted against the dress. My mind raced for something to say before I sat down.

My mind came up blank by the time I sat down. She looked up in surprise, then immediately her face changed to irritation.

"What, are you following me now?"

I gestured to all of the other tables. They were all full. I became suddenly and painfully aware that I was grinning. I stopped.

"Can I sit here?"

She sighed and nodded. She looked down at my plate.

"Oh my _god_ , do you have enough shrimp?"

I looked at my plate and realized that I hadn't actually gotten anything else on my plate, and the amount of shrimp I had, to anyone who had to eat to stay alive anyways, would be disturbing. Now I was at a cross-roads. Did I dare eat the shrimp I had, or did I leave it alone, like it was a coincidence that I was holding a plate of cocktail shrimp. I was messing this up. I was crashing and burning. Power to control time and space and the only thing I really needed right now was charisma.

"Well, I haven't eaten in over a week, and I love me some shrimp." I grinned and died inside. She pursed her lips and stared out into the crowd. I ate a few shrimp and sat in the world's most awkward silence as I tried desperately to think of something to say that wouldn't come out incredibly stupid or incredibly creepy. She was the one who broke the silence.

"I could've handled it myself." She said quietly.

"What?" I asked, swallowing the shrimp in my mouth.

"I said I could've handled it myself." She said louder, glaring at me with those frozen eyes. Ice cold and burning. She was angry at me. "I didn't _need_ you to swoop in and save the day."

I had nothing to say. I was the hero here, right? I mean, I didn't do it because I thought she was inept, but that was my job as a hero. Maybe I wasn't a hero? I didn't know what to say to that. She laughed a sharp, derisive laugh. "God, you men are all the same."

"Uh…"

"I mean what right do you have?" She said, heating up.

"Look, I think we got off to a bad start. I'm Tekk Lanyang, and this is my inappropriate portion of shrimp." I said, trying to derail the hate-train I'd somehow boarded. She blinked a few times, took a breath and eventually said, "Marsh."

"Marsh?"

"Yeah, Marsh." She said, crossing her arms.

"It's nice to meet you." I said. Silence drifted over us again. This brief excursion into enemy territory hadn't been the rousing success I'd hoped it would be. Marsh suddenly scoffed.

"You know it figures. He'd been hounding me for a date for months now. I finally say yes, and he shows up drunk."

' _I'm sorry to hear that_ ' was what I wanted to say. Something commiserating. Get to a point where I could apologize for assuming she was in trouble. _Just don't screw this up_ , I thought.

"I think you're very beautiful." I blurted and I felt my soul leave my body.

There was a shocked silence as she processed what I had just said and I realized what had just come out of my mouth. It dawned on me that that phrase had been playing on repeat in my head since I saw her across the room and it finally found its way out.

"I… Wha-?" She started, anger starting to build again. It was out there, couldn't retract it. Back-pedaling was suicide, so I just opened my mouth and prayed silently. The words came out quickly without me thinking.

"I think you're very beautiful and I can't stop staring at your eyes and I think that you made a mistake for bringing Harry here, but I'm glad that you did because it gave me the chance to meet you and I'm sorry I didn't think you were helpless or anything, or maybe I did a little, but I only wanted to help and I'm sorry if that offended you, really I am, but I did it so we have to move past that and goddamn it I took too much shrimp and it's super embarrassing but I just really like shrimp and I lost control a little at the buffet but I should've ditched the plate before coming over here because I look like a total freak right now and I would give anything to go back to five minutes ago before I opened my mouth and made myself out to be a total creep and I'd even settle for some sort of distraction so I could slip away in the chaos and tend to my wounded ego as I realize that the first woman I thought was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen hates me and I totally tanked any chance of asking her out and oh my god I'm still talking why can't I stop talking won't someone please make some sort of distraction?"

"THERE YOU ARE!" I heard yelling from across the room.

"Oh thank god." I gasped, as I saw Harry barreling through the crowd trailed by two men trying to calm him down. Marsh looked at me in shock and then turned her head to see Harry standing over our table.

"You think you can just come over here and steal my woman?" Harry yelled. Marsh was on her feet.

"I am _NOT_ your woman." Marsh said.

"Not talking to you." He said, shoving her back into her seat. I leapt to my feet. Harry saw my movement and launched a punch at me before the two men trailing him could stop him. I felt my eyes flash as I grabbed his fist in the air and brought it to an immediate halt. The look of shock on his face was priceless as I squeezed his fist. He crumpled to one knee in pain.

"Don't you _ever_ lay a hand on her again." I seethed. The two men arrived and hesitated. They suddenly grabbed me, assessing me as the threat in this situation.

"Woah, not me!" I said, hearing them try to tell me to calm down; watching Harry stand back up and reel a fist back. "Someone stop him, he's going to-" I saw stars. The room spun as the men holding me let go in surprise and jumped on Harry. I rocked on my feet a little, saw Marsh who looked horrified, then felt my legs buckle and down I went.


	7. 006-This Was My First Meeting with Tails

_006 - This Was My First Meeting With Tails_

The next morning rushed towards me it seemed. I hadn't blacked out, but I'd never taken a punch to the face before, so I was still unsteady on my feet. I was escorted to another room where I could lie down and recuperate. I felt better in a few minutes and chose to sneak away from the party. It was, officially, a disastrous event for me and all I wanted to do was go back home and sleep.

When I awoke in the morning two things crossed my mind. First was my impending meeting with Tails. This was exciting to me for reasons that I couldn't really put into words. The youngest member of the Freedom Fighters and one of the most powerful minds in all the world, and he was going to be meeting with me! I hadn't grown up looking up to Tails, obviously. He was only about 10 and I was already roboticized long before he'd ever been born. Or was I? I couldn't figure out the exact dates, everything was a blur back then.

The second thing that crossed my mind interrupted that train of thought; Why hadn't my power stopped Harry's fist? Most of my ability that had been used in dangerous situations occurred by reflex. It was a mystery to me why in that heated moment it had suddenly failed me. I needed to understand why that was, because such a failure in Spec-Pro could prove fatal.

I slipped on my clothes (the tuxedo had broken back down into nanites at some point during the night it would seem) and found a bus that ran to the part of the city where I could find Tails' workshop. I found that my military ID acted as a bus pass. The ride out was uneventful and I'm sure I nodded off once or twice. I was unusually lethargic that morning.

I wandered around for a little bit before I found where I was supposed to go. It was a large house near a lake, with something that resembled an airplane hangar in the back. I approached the house and knocked on the door. I heard movement from inside and started feeling nervous. It briefly occurred to me how strange it was that I, an adult, felt nervous to meet someone half my age. The door opened and I saw a bright yellow fox with two, large, bushy tails wagging behind him, about a head shorter than I was.

"You must be Tekk!" He said, his voice high and child-like. "You're taller than I imagined…"

"So are you." I responded. It was true. Either he'd been going through a growth spurt since the last propaganda posters were made, or I simply had bad judgement of height.

"Come on inside!" He said, gesturing me in.

The house was very clean. Immaculate, even. I had read something about geniuses being inherently messy, as though things like cleaning drained too much mental energy that they needed for other things. This definitely wasn't the case. We passed through a sitting room with a couple of comfy looking couches and a large bookshelf. We walked through a small kitchen that was completely clean with the exception of a few dishes in the sink awaiting washing.

It was when we reached the workroom that it started making sense.

"It looks like a tornado went off in here…" I said, looking at the half-finished robotics and machines scattered around the garage-like room. Tools and parts lay in piles everywhere. Tails gingerly danced around some, but walked right through others. Apparently he knew what was important and what wasn't.

"No, that's in the hangar." He smiled. It took me a minute to figure out his joke. His expression suddenly changed to a more thoughtful one. "Well, actually, I guess technically the prototype Tornado Three engine _did_ go off in here…" He said, looking at large black marks on the wall next to the twisted wreckage of what looked to be an engine-lift.

Tails stopped at a workbench and cleared off some scrap-metal. Underneath the garbage was a computer terminal that he booted up and started typing at.

"So, Nicole said that we should meet. That I could help you with some of your research?" I asked, looking around for a place to sit.

"Yeah! Um… Just let me…" He typed a little more. He hit a final key with a small flourish of his hand, and a large machine came to life from under a canvas tarp. Once the canvas was pulled away, it looked like a wicked kind of death-ray.

"Uh…" I said, eyeing it with concern.

"Oh, no, don't worry about that." Tails said dismissively, "That's just something I've been working on. It's a chaos syphon. It's actually what I need your help with."

"Chaos… Syphon?" I asked.

"Yep." He said, proudly. "Since the singularity even happened with the Chaos Emeralds, getting our hands on one has been incredibly tricky, right? Since the Chaos Emeralds became scarce, I've been working on making synthetic Chaos Emeralds. They're good, but they're not great. Not as good as a legitimate Chaos Emerald." He wandered over to the machine and pulled a hunk of what looked like grey glass from a canister mounted on the back of the syphon.

"So I made this. The idea was actually, in the beginning, to create a counter-measure in case Eggman got his hands on Chaos Emeralds again. We could point this thing at his machine and syphon off the energy from the Emerald, causing whatever plans he had to come to a halt. But then I had a different idea to utilize the syphon to create new emeralds."

"But…?" I prompted.

"Well, it comes back to my synthetic Emeralds… They're not as good because it's not genuine Chaos Energy that powers them. It's like a store-brand cola. It's close to the real thing, but never as good. The synthetic emeralds radiate an energy signature on a similar cosine waveform but they have a much shorter half-life. So they cannot sustain energy output for very long."

"Uh… So, synthetic emeralds burn out quicker?" I asked, trying to follow what he was saying.

"Well, yes and no. Yes, they burn out quicker, but natural Chaos Emeralds don't burn out at all. At least, they don't _anymore._ Ever since the singularity. Or… How do I explain this…?" He stopped tinkering with the machine for a moment and looked up, trying to think.

"So, it's like, the Chaos Energy is stored in the Chaos Emerald, like the voltage in a battery. You could drain the battery, except that the energy you took out of the emerald still exists. It keeps itself steady somehow. It violates the known laws of thermodynamics, since there isn't any sort of decay or diminishing return. The energy it emits charges itself by exactly how much it emitted in the first place. It's fascinating."

"So what happens when you use the Chaos Emerald? Doesn't that power get used up like the power from a battery?"

"That's the thing that I'm still studying," Tails said, getting visibly excited, "Let's change metaphors and say that the Chaos Emerald is a bucket of water. It's constantly spilling over the rim, into a reservoir under the bucket, and then getting pulled back up from the bottom of the bucket to replace what has spilled over. Get the image?" I thought I did.

"So now, we imagine that we take a cup and scoop a significant amount of water out from that bucket. Somehow, that water replaces itself. You can drain the bucket, turn it upside down, but after a while, it will slowly refill itself until it's spilling over again, then it remains at that level until something changes again."

"And I'm guessing," I said, feeling like I was finally getting involved in the conversation, "That a synthetic Emerald can fill itself with the pseudo-Chaos Energy, but it can't replenish itself."

"Right!" Tails exclaimed, resuming his tinkering with the chaos syphon.

"The synthetic emeralds are buckets that I've filled with, let's say, water that I made from arduously combining hydrogen and oxygen. Compositionally, it's the same as the natural chaos… bucket…" He paused. It was clear that he realized how strange this metaphor was getting. He shook his head. "But, for reasons that I don't understand yet, the naturally occurring… erm.. _Chaos Water_ can replenish itself, whereas the type that I create doesn't have this property."

"Uh huh…"

"So, I have this hypothesis, that if I can catch some naturally occurring Chaos Energy using this syphon, I can have it start filling a synthetic Chaos Emerald, making it as good as a real Emerald."

"You could make your own Chaos Emeralds." I said, finally catching on.

"Exactly! I wouldn't have to worry about a limited fuel supply like I do using a synthetic emerald."

"How are you sure that it's the water, and not the bucket that contains it?" I asked.

"Well," Tails said, slowing down a little, "I'm not. At least, not entirely. There have only been a few times when the Chaos Emeralds have been entirely drained, and they weren't drained in conditions where I was at my leisure to examine their composition."

"But, I have examined their chemical makeup in their charged, natural resting state. I discovered that calling them 'emeralds' is a misnomer. They're actually hunks of quartz, chemically speaking. There's no chemical difference between them and a quartz crystal you'd find in the ground. They've just been charged by Chaos Energy. So, I'm proceeding with this hypothesis that it's the nature of the energy that's the difference, not the structure they're contained in." He looked up from his work. "Though, that's my backup experiment if this line of thought turns out to be a dud."

"And that's where I come in?"

"Yes." Tails said, closing a panel on the syphon and putting down a wrench. "Nicole tells me that you're brimming with Chaos Energy. I've not seen this outside of the rare occasions where someone has become momentarily fused with Chaos Energy, like when Sonic became Super Sonic. Or that one time I became Super Tails…" He paused and a blissful expression passed over his face, remembering something.

"But the thing is, those are always temporary. They don't pull on the host for their sustained energy burn. They pull on the rings they have in their possession."

"The magic rings?" I asked.

"Well, I'm hesitant to call them magic rings anymore. They have a unique relationship with the Chaos Emeralds, though that relationship has gotten more complex since the singularity…" Tails paused again. "You know, it's getting harder and harder to live a scientifically minded life when you have to acknowledge the existence of magic. I mean, deep down, I just assume that 'magic' just manipulates laws of science that we don't know about yet. But it does make it harder to figure out how things work…"

"Like how you can fly with your tails?" I asked. He looked at me.

"Uh, yeah…" He said, looking at his fluffy tails. "I mean, they're not an aerodynamic shape or anything. And the fur would be a huge source of drag… I… I hadn't actually thought about that before…" Tails stared at his twitching tails.

I cleared my throat.

"Sorry, got lost in a tangent there…" Tails said. "Anyways. Yes. You. You are brimming with some sort of Chaos Energy, but it's evidently not the same kind of energy that's used when someone uses the Chaos Emeralds to fuse themselves with that energy. There isn't any sort of power vacuum occurring, trying to pull that Chaos Energy back into wherever you got it from. And Nicole says that the stable energy loop found in natural Chaos Emeralds is occurring within your own metabolism, too."

I didn't know that Nicole had been running these kinds of scans on me. It made me wonder what other experiments she was running on me without my knowledge.

"So, it comes down to this. I'd like to run a series of experiments on you… er… _with_ you, of course, to better understand the relationship of Chaos Emeralds, Chaos Energy, and see if I can't replicate the stable energy loop that you have occurring inside you into one of my hunks of quartz here." He gestured towards the crystal he'd removed from the chaos syphon.

"You're going to drain my power?" I asked, feeling a little frightened.

"Only a little," Tails said, looking for something on his desk. He found a pair of goggles and tossed them to me. "Nicole sent me some of the data she's collected on you and I was examining it, I hope you don't mind." He went back to his computer and began inputting commands into the terminal.

"From what I read, I formed a hypothesis that should put you at ease."

"I'm all ears…" I said, slipping on the goggles.

"In a Chaos Emerald, the Chaos Energy replenishes itself. It violates the laws of thermodynamics and creates energy from itself, right?"

"Uh, right…?"

"Well, I have this idea that whatever Chaos Energy is residing inside you feeds off your metabolism, and your metabolism feeds off the Chaos Energy. She mentioned that you rarely need to eat or drink. And that while you sleep every night, it's not because of any pressing need to most nights. Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"I think that the Chaos Energy is fulfilling all the needs of your body while at rest. It's giving the cells in your body the energy required that's usually generated by cellular respiration. It's maintaining your body to be in peak physical condition because that's the most efficient way for the Chaos Energy to use your body later."

"Use my body?"

"I suspect that when you use your powers that the Chaos Energy pulls energy that is generated through your body's natural metabolism to replenish itself during moments of rapid burn. That's why you feel tired or fatigued after strenuous application of your power."

I considered this.

"In a sense, the Chaos Energy in your body is a symbiotic relationship. It sustains your body so that your body can sustain it. Left on its own, it would either have to slowly regenerate itself or dissipate into the atmosphere. But with your body, it can use your body's natural energy making process to fuel itself. In return, it keeps your body in the best state to produce that energy. I suspect that in technical terms, you still _need_ to eat and drink, but whatever calories you put in go a lot further, meaning that you'd probably only need to actually eat once every couple of years." Tails finished typing and turned around.

"But the point I'm making is that you could charge an emerald and not begin to diminish the vast stores of Chaos Energy inside you. Your metabolism boosts the Chaos Energy and the Chaos Energy boosts your metabolism. It's a beneficial, upwards spiral. So if I use my syphon here, I should be able to pull just enough to charge the quartz and make a Chaos Emerald, and you'll be none the worse for wear."

"I hate to sound like a wuss," I said, pulling the goggles over my eyes, "but will it hurt?" Tails hesitated.

"To be perfectly honest, there's no way to be sure. I think that it's most probable that you'll feel fatigued, like a wave of sleepiness hit you, but it won't hurt per se. But I've never removed Chaos Energy from a living being before. This is new ground. Sonic says that the Chaos Emeralds give him a boost of energy when he powers down from being Super Sonic, but that's the Chaos Energy leaving on its own volition. When it's forcibly removed, I can't say what that will feel like." He pulled out a pad and a pen. "But, I'm ready to record the reaction you have to it when we do it."

I rolled my eyes. Great, I thought, as long as we can document my discomfort…

"Are you ready?" Tails asked, standing up from his chair.

"I think so." I replied, trying to be brave. To be honest, I was terrified. There was one possibility that he had neglected to mention, and that was the possibility that the chaos syphon might not stop when he turned off the machine. That it might just keep sucking away at my power, killing me, or at best, leaving me without my power or any ability whatsoever. But Tails seemed confident, and he _was_ a genius after all, right? I tried not to think about the practicality of putting my life in the hands of a ten year old.

"Step into the box here." Tails indicated a small square of yellow tape on the ground directly in front of the syphon.

I placed both feet firmly into the box and faced the syphon. Tails turned on the power and I could hear a loud hum emanate from the machine. I was staring straight down the barrel of what looked like a large death ray. Red lights dotted its surface and the mount it was on had wires coiling around the structure.

"Alright, starting recording… now…" Tails said, hitting a button on the computer. I saw a small security video feed of the experiment display on the monitor. It was recording me and the syphon from a three-quarter's perspective. A camera must've been in the ceiling somewhere.

"Preparing the syphon for firing. Ready in three… Two… One…" Tails looked at me and pressed a switch on the syphon.

Lightning struck from me to the mouth of the syphon, a flash of blazing turquoise light jumped from me to the quartz in a matter of seconds. It didn't hurt exactly, but it was intensely uncomfortable. My nerves all started sounding off with that static feeling you get when your leg falls asleep. Tails shut off the syphon quickly, and my body's nerves started to calm down. I gasped for air. It felt as though I'd run a mile.

"Are you okay? Did it hurt?" Tails asked, genuine worry on his face.

"No…" I gasped. I explained to him the sensation I'd felt as best as I could. It took a moment before he remembered to start writing down what I was telling him. His worry about how I was doing had overcome his scientific curiosity momentarily.

"So, we have to go again, right?" I asked once I'd caught my breath. "You turned off the machine so fast."

"Actually, the Chaos Emerald is full."He pulled the gem from the compartment in the syphon. A glowing turquoise crystal was in his hand. "The experiment was a complete success!" Tails was beaming.

"Now the real fun begins, right?" I asked. Tails looked at me and smiled even wider. He then looked down at the small gem in his hand.

"Oh…" Tails said to the rock, "have I got plans for _you_!"

 **This is Jak-rabitt again. Just want to mention that I had a lot of fun writing this chapter and coming up with the logistics about Chaos Emeralds. Also, wanted to mention that,** ** _damn_** **is it hard to figure out dates and ages when a series has been going for some 25 years, but everyone stays the same age. I mean, technically, Tails is listed as 8 in the Sonic Adventure 2 manual. But considering all that has come before and after, it's really kind of strange to think of all of stuff that's happened and he's still supposed to be 8.**

 **I had a throwaway idea that won't make it into this story or anything, but that Mobius was actually called Mobius because its timeline resembled a mobius strip. It kept repeating its own history and its inhabitants never noticed that there was never any aging. Time passed, but also didn't pass. That's how you can have a "30 years in the future" issue while never progressing towards that state. Because they're constantly living the same year over and over again, only with different situations. I thought of an endgame concept for Sonic where they discovered this was the case and were able to break the infinite continuity loop that allowed them to age and move on with the natural progression of life.**

 **That's really neither here nor there, though. Thanks for reading this far, and please excuse this tangent.**


	8. 007 - This Was How She Found Out

_007 - This Was How She Found Out_

Weeks had passed from the debacle at the party. Every week I was visiting Tails in my off-time to help him with his projects and my time at home was spent honing my abilities. My life in Spec-Pro was going fine, except for the occasional moment when Marsh and I would run into each other. On my end, I would get tongue tied and my breath would catch in my throat. For her part, she acted like I didn't exist, sometimes walking right into me and painfully shoving her way past me. She was strangely passive aggressive like that; the most openly aggressive one could be while still maintaining passivity.

I did eventually buy a new wardrobe of clothes and was shocked at how much money one could save when you barely eat. The money in my account multiplied and I no longer looked homeless; no longer wearing threads that had survived the destruction and rebirth of an entire nation. Despite my new look, though, I didn't socialize much. I rarely talked with the members of my unit outside of work, and I rarely talked with anyone that wasn't Tails or Nicole any other time. I was slowly earning the reputation of the strange, youthful hermit, living in the far end of the city by himself. I knew that if I ever intended to be a hero to these people, I needed to become more extroverted, but I found myself rationalizing my own seclusion every day and promising that _tomorrow_ I would go out and interact with other people in my neighborhood, or join my coworkers for drinks, or finally work up the courage to talk to Marsh and not make myself look like a complete fool.

The only thing I was really excelling at was my work. As the newest recruits for Spec-Pro, our assignments usually revolved around reconnaissance work. Traditionally, this meant trekking across terrain with camping supplies and rations and staking out a spot for a few days to watch enemy movements or encampments and radio back if anything seemed amiss. For me, this usually meant leaving the city, hiking for a few miles and remote viewing everything that needed to be observed. My reports came in just as, if not more, detailed than everyone else's.

This week, however, we were getting a more meatier task, as I had expected when we were told to meet in the briefing room at 0600. I arrived and saw my unit grouped on one side of the wall, Darx hopelessly trying to stay awake. There were a dozen other Spec-Pro agents milling around waiting for the briefing to begin. This was going to be a larger operation than I had thought. I saw a flash of grey fur on the far end of the room and knew it was Marsh.

 _Today I'm going to talk to her._

She looked at me and I felt her eyes send a chill up my spine and stop my breath in my throat.

 _Tomorrow I'm going to talk to her._

Agent Niles opened the door and an agent near the door shouted for attention. Everyone leapt to their feet and snapped to attention. Niles approached the large table in the middle of the dark room and set down some manilla folders.

"At ease." He said. Everyone assumed a more relaxed posture.

"Good morning everyone. First off I'd like to congratulate our newest recruits. You've been performing remarkably and as such, you're all getting moved up in the responsibility queue. That means harder jobs, not more money. Sorry." Light chuckling filled the room.

"The harder job in this particular case, is this." Agent Niles pressed a button on the table and a glowing blue model of what looked to be a radio tower appeared in the air above the table, casting pale blue light across every face and illuminating the dark corners of the room.

"Agent Franz, can you identify this structure?" Niles asked.

The punk-rock skunk-girl paused as she looked at the model in the air.

"It looks like some sort of short-distance communications relay, sir." She sounded bored. Agent Niles smiled.

"That's exactly what it is. Some of the information you've all been collecting has shown us that Eggman is trying to figure out ways to communicate long distance without the risk of those communications being intercepted by Nicole or any of his other enemies. Reconnaissance gathered indicates that this _is_ an Eggman installation, even if he hasn't painted his ugly mug all over it, based mostly on the merit that there are Eggmech Infantry Drones patrolling each installation. Those _do_ have his ugly mug painted all over them, unfortunately." Another chuckle. " _Fortunately_ , your task will involve eliminating these rust-buckets and destroying these comm relays. Now, usually this would be a one-man-per-relay operation, but since our newest recruits are woefully short on field-hours _and_ there was some sort of violent scuffle at the party a few weeks ago," I blushed and tried not to make eye contact with anyone, "the higher-ups think that this would be a perfect opportunity to both build division unity and act as a peer-to-peer training-slash-evaluation session. I'm inclined to agree if only because my paychecks usually depend on my inclinations. That said, it's not a terrible idea, and as such, you'll all be partnered up. You'll either be in the role of Lead Agent, which entails the role of tutor and demolitions expert, or Second Agent, which will be learning as much as they can from the Lead Agent and you will also be trying not to die. You've all done well on that front so far, let's keep it up. I have assignments, please pay attention and meet with your partner once the briefing is over."

So I would be partnered up with someone else in this room. I wondered who it would be. I saw Harry standing in a corner far from Marsh. I thought of the scenario wherein Harry was my Lead and I dreaded the thought. We'd talked since the "party incident" and had made peace. Harry had had too much to drink that night and was embarrassed by his actions. For my part, I apologized for the violence towards him. We were on pleasant, if not good, terms with each other, but I couldn't imagine how awkward a mission with him could be, especially if the subject of Marsh ever came up between us. There really couldn't be a worse pair than Harry and me.

"- Agent Marsh Wolfram. Lead Agent. Agent Tekk Lanyan. Second.-"

And there it was: a worse pair than Harry and me. I forced myself not to glance at Marsh who no doubt was seething at this point. The briefing ended when Agent Niles finished giving the assignments. The room erupted into noise as soon as Agent Niles left as agents started looking for their assigned partners and conversations broke out. There was movement and chaos all around me as I started looking for Marsh. She had gone from where I'd seen her last. Suddenly, I felt a strong hand grab me hard on my shoulder and shove me towards the door. I looked to my left, startled, to see a very angry Marsh with her jaw set. I think she may have grunted a, "Come on," between clenched teeth, but I might have been imagining it, since I couldn't imagine any noise escaping the lockdown she had on her mouth.

She led me out into the hallway and pushed me against a wall.

"I have to go to the Quartermaster to get our supplies," she seethed at me, "You will wait here until I come back to collect you. Do you understand?" I nodded, speechless. I opened my mouth to speak.

"Don't." She held up a warning finger at my face. "I swear to god. Just, don't." My mouth closed. I was terrified. As she stormed off down the hallway towards the Quartermaster, I started wondering why she was so mad at me. I wasn't happy about our assignment either, but I wasn't borderline violent about it. Well, I suppose part of me was happy about our assignment. There was a small part inside my brain that lived beyond rationale and reason. That part was still hopelessly in love with Marsh and despite her clear rage at my very existence was still chirping on happily about how pretty she was and where we'd go on our first date. I hated that part of my brain. It made it hard to focus.

Why was she angry at me? Was she still embarrassed? Was she angry that I'd made a fool of myself? Did she think she got the worst agent in Spec-Pro as her partner. ' _Was she trying to hide her deep affection for me?'_ that tiny part in my brain chirped. I stifled that thought as quickly as I could.

I stood there staring at the hallways for a little under an hour. I watched as the room emptied and pairs dispersed towards the Quartermaster's office. Most walked past me again a few minutes later with equipment in tow. Marsh was making me wait. She was probably trying to figure out how to convince Agent Niles to change her assigned partner. When she rounded the corner, angry but a little more dejected than before, I knew that was exactly what she had done. And Agent Niles had denied her request. She tossed a rucksack at me.

"Come on." She said, defeated. I followed meekly.

For the first few hours, before the sun came up, we rode in transports until we were clear from the city walls. We then walked through heavy forests after we'd left the transport behind. The first hour was fine, since we were sharing a transport with a couple of other Spec-Pro agents. Once we left the transport, however, we went our separate ways. Marsh handed me the map and told me to figure out where we were going. I pulled out my compass and plotted a course towards the destination labelled on our map. I then, quickly, looked on ahead with my power to ensure I'd done the plotting correctly. I saw the communications relay in the middle of a large clearing about six hours from where we stood. I told Marsh which direction to go. She looked over my work. "Mmm." she hummed, not wanting to open her mouth for any praise.

We took off into the forest. She was marching at a brisk pace. I followed a few steps behind her, reading the mission dossier. Apparently we were to detonate the bombs at exactly 1400 hours. The explosives needed to be in sync with the rest of the strike teams so the entire relay would go down at once. We didn't want Eggman to be able to figure out which relay went down first, on the off chance that he might be able to glean something about our tactics. A complete and instantaneous blackout would be the best course of action. With any luck, it would also disorient any Eggmechs in the vicinity that were utilizing the relays for directions. As I read, I felt out ahead with my power to ensure that I wasn't tripping over any roots or running into any trees and that I was still following Marsh.

"You shouldn't read while walking, it's dangerous." Marsh said, looking back at me.

"I can read and see my surroundings just fine." I replied, engrossed in the dossier.

"Oh yeah? How many fingers am I holding up?" She asked.

"Just the one." I replied, still not looking up.

"Lucky guess." She muttered.

"Besides, I have you on point keeping an eye out for dangers," I closed the folder and slipped it into my rucksack, " I'm finished anyways."

We walked in silence for another few hours or so. We paused for ten minutes to eat a quick lunch before heading out again. The trees were stunning in the sunlight, emerald light filtering down onto our bodies as we moved quietly and quickly through the underbrush. The only thing spoiling it was the absolute silence coming from the beautiful wolfess in front of me. After so long, I couldn't take the silence any more.

"Marsh, can I ask you a question?" I ventured. She stopped.

"Make it quick." She said, annoyed at the interruption. I swallowed hard. It was rapidly dawning on me just how pathetic a master of space and time could feel.

"Why do you hate me?"

She stopped in her tracks and laughed mirthlessly; A kind of frantic, half-crazed laugh.

"You want to know why I hate you? Why you grind my gears? Why you get on my last nerve?" She asked, getting more intense with each question, stepping closer and closer to me, closer to my face. I could see those cool blue eyes burning with an intensity that made my throat close up. I took a step back, ready for her to blow.

"It's because you _have_ to be the hero!" She yelled at my face. I swallowed painfully, my throat so constricted.

"It doesn't matter what happens to other people, just so long as you're seen as the glorified _god_ that you think you are. Yeah, I've seen you. _Watched_ you. When I first met you at the party, I thought, hey he's just an ass. Maybe less ass, and more stupid, but maybe he's not so bad. But you ignore everyone that isn't you. You snub your other squad mates, you slack off on your recon assignments but still write up these intricately detailed reports like you've actually done the work, and in training, you were always 'helping' everyone else. Did you know that on the written portions you actually scored the _lowest_ out of your squad? But you're over there trying to help Agent Sinrili with some machine or showing a better way to do this or a more efficient way of doing that. You show off in front of the command and goddamn it, you can't just _not_ be a hero. Well, _I don't need a hero._ I can handle myself. I'm in Spec-Pro, just like you, only I did it _before_ you. I have training you can't even imagine and _you_ were going to save _me_ from that pissant Harry? You just trot on up, trying to act so suave, but you look like an ass. You try and act competent, but you're just not and it's clear to everyone with half a brain. But it's the _pretending_ I can't handle. You're pretending like you can handle any situation. You're so fake it's amazing you passed the background check and came back as a living person.

"But then what happens? You hit on me. You fucking hit on me. You don't know me. You don't know what I'm like. _What_ I like. You don't even know my last name, but you're over here spouting some love-at-first-sight bullshit, valiantly stepping up to protect my honor when you don't know the first goddamn thing about me. What, am I supposed to be impressed? Am I supposed to swoon and fall for you? Become a helpless little puppy now that I have this big man in my life to _finally_ fight my battle for me? Screw that shit, you _fake fuck_. You want to be the hero, well guess what, it's the 'heroes' that end up dead out here, and they usually take the people that depended on them, with them. I don't need a hero and I _don't need you._ " Her chest was heaving, as she finished her rant. Panting, she wiped a little bit of spittle from her jaw and stared me down, daring me to fight back.

I felt cold. I was sweating and my mouth had run dry. I felt a knot rising up in my throat and I wasn't sure if it was bile or if I was just simply going to cry. I was damn-near omnipotent, but she knew exactly what I was most afraid of and _she hated me for it_. That tiny, optimistic part of my brain finally died. No more romantic chirps.

The fear was slowly being replaced by anger, though. I wanted to retaliate. An eye for an eye. Who the hell did she think she was to be tearing me down? She doesn't know the first thing about me, really. But, no. I was trying to build a bridge here, if only because my survival in this mission might depend on it. After all, everything she had said was technically true, wasn't it? I _was_ fake. It _was_ a miracle that my background check didn't come back with a dead-man's name and face. I _was_ trying to be a hero. My transition from Ivan to Tekk was so confusing to me, so it must've been obvious to anyone paying attention.

 _She'd been watching me_. It suddenly clicked in my head. She'd been spying on me doing my reconnaissance and she _knew_ I was cutting corners. The only reason I hadn't been drummed out or written up or anything is that my intel was just as good and accurate as anyone else's. Better, even. It must've infuriated her that no one believed her that I was slacking. Another sudden realization crossed my mind. _She'd been watching me_. Why would she be doing that? _I was on her radar_. I'd made some sort of impression that she wanted to know more about me without actually dealing with me. Maybe she'd actually liked me.

No. I needed to stop that line of thinking right there. That part of my brain was dead. She was right. I didn't know her. I didn't know if we were compatible at all and all I was basing my little fantasy of her and me together on was only on her appearance. I needed to revisit square one. I had calmed down a little and without even noticing, we'd resumed walking.

"Okay." I started, "So, now can we start working together?" I asked timidly. I saw her back stiffen, then relax a little, defeated. She was still fuming, but I was getting the feeling that she was more angry at her own outburst than at me for the moment.

"Yeah…" She said reluctantly, "I guess we can…"

The rest of the journey was more pleasant. We started with some small talk that eventually turned into more concrete details about ourselves. Her demeanor was still frigid, for the most part, but compared to the silence from before, she was downright warm and sunny. We talked about what made us join the Freedom Fighters in the first place, about how her parents had died before they were roboticized and I was able to make some personal connection on that point. After a while, she started talking on her own. She told me stories about her first missions, her training. In short, we shot the shit. It felt good to be on better terms with her, if even temporarily. Any time my mind started drifting towards a romantic train of thought, I quickly shot it down. Romanticizing my friendship with her was only going to complicate things.

Eventually, Marsh told me that we needed to be silent; we were approaching the target. I nodded and followed behind her stealthily. After a short while we saw the comm tower through the treetops. We approached the clearing to get a better view.

The tower was easily eighty feet tall with guy-wires supporting the structure. A scafolding ran halfway up the tower where a small generator and control panel were. Large dishes were arrayed haphazardly on the top of the tower.

"Damn…" Marsh whispered, looking through her binoculars. "We've got Eggmechs. Three, no, four on the ground, one on the tower… Confirm?" She handed me the binoculars. I put them up to my eyes and saw a group of four Eggmechs walking in formation in the clearing, guns at the ready. Another stood up on the platform near the controls.

The Eggmechs themselves were odd little things. They stood a full head higher than either me or Marsh, but they had no necks. Their body was comprised of a single ovoid shape with thin, bare arms and legs. A long, conical, pointed nose rested between two amber, glowing lenses as eyes. They had a red, black, and silver color scheme, mimicking the colors of the Eggman Empire. Each had a large, automatic rifle in their hands. I knew from my training that the Eggmechs were usually equipped with hollow-point rounds, for maximum damage against us Mobians. Eggman didn't play around in his side of the war. Not for the first time I wondered if our tactics were intended to do anything other than prolong the war. The Freedom Fighter's insistence against firearms and lethal tactics seemed counter-productive, but I'd always been told that even with those tactics, Eggman had technically been successfully defeated twice. He just kept springing up in new bodies.

"Confirmed. Four on the ground, one on the tower." I told Marsh, handing her back the binoculars.

"Alright, plan time." She said, hunkering down between a fallen log.

"Those four on patrol are likely set to pursue any threat they see en masse. So some sort of distraction will likely pull all four, so that would just leave the one up on the tower."

"Why would a single distraction pull all four?" I asked.

"For whatever reason, Eggman programs these things to work with maximum force and lethality, so they don't ever split their numbers. At least, not these drone Eggmechs. It's actually a tactic we've employed before to take out large groups. Have one person draw their fire and have another attack from the side or behind. The entire group will turn and leave the first person behind to focus on the new target. You can pick them off easily enough if you're good at dodging bullets. They're not very bright."

"So, if I were to go to the other side of the clearing, through the trees, and pull their fire, they'd chase me into the trees, right? You just have to take care of the one on the tower, set the explosives and we're peaches and gravy." I suggested.

"Peaches and _gravy_?" Marsh asked. I nodded. "No. I'm not going to let a rookie take down four Eggmechs on his own."

This was driving me insane. I could disable all five of the damn things from where we were standing. I could even strip them down to their constituent parts and organize them neatly on the forest floor and even topple the comm tower while I was at it. But I had to work within my fake limitations.

"I can disable them once I get them into the forest."

Marsh shot me a very dangerous look.

"I know, I know. You think I'm playing the hero. But let's break this down. If I get them into the forest, I can get into the trees. We both know that Eggmech's have terrible vertical targeting. As long as I stay high, they're not going to hit me. I can drop rocks, large branches, hell, even myself, on top of them to disable them from safety. The hardest one to tackle is the one on the tower. He's got a sniper's shot of anyone entering the clearing for a hundred yards. You're playing the hero here, dodging bullets from above, not me." Marsh looked skeptical.

"I still don't think you can handle four mechs on your own. It's too much." She said.

"Marsh," I said looking dead into her eyes, "I know you don't have a high opinion of me, you were very… _verbal_ … about that. But please believe me when I say that I know my own ability better than you think you do. If I say I can do this, I can do this. I wouldn't put your life in danger, or my life for that matter, trying to show off. If I didn't think I could do this, I wouldn't even suggest it."

Marsh seemed annoyed, but to her credit, she bit her tongue and mulled it over. The small amount of trust we'd built up over the past few hours was starting to pay off. She finally said, "Do you really think you can do it?"

I nodded. "Stick to the trees and play it safe." Or, I thought, get them out of sight and make them instant piles of scrap. But she didn't need to know about that.

Marsh chewed on this for a moment. Finally, she said, "I'm writing on your KIA report that you went against your superior's direct orders and got yourself shot. I'm not tanking my career for you." She was only half joking.

"Hell, you can say I was a Dark Legion spy for all I care. You only get to slander me if I die." I shot back. That won a small smile from her.

"Alright, let's do this." Marsh said, grabbing the explosives from her rucksack.

I circumvented the clearing, staying just inside the treeline. When I got into position, I pulled a small mirror from my pocket and reflected a flash of sunlight back to where Marsh was waiting for my signal. I saw two small flashes on the other side of the clearing which was my signal to go. I took a deep breath from the clearing when I saw the Eggmechs moving closer to me. I hurled a rock at the leader of the four which clanged loudly against its metal body. All four robots swiveled at their midsection to point at me with their guns. Immediately they fired into the trees where I'd come from. I turned back towards the trees and started running, watching the underbrush and leaves jerk and twitch spastically as bullets tore through them.

For my part, I had a shield in place covering my back from any gunfire. Despite my dodging behind trees and weaving, I still felt a few shots make contact with that shield. If it weren't for my powers, I'd be a dead fox. After I was sure they'd followed me deep enough into the forest, I hid behind a tree and leapt up into its branches. As I watched the four Eggmechs walk underneath me, I did my magic. I unraveled them. Everything that was secured and tight in their construction became shockingly loose. Joints suddenly disconnected from themselves, screws and bolts fell onto the forest floor followed by large pieces of chassis from their egg-shaped bodies. They literally fell to pieces in a shower of metal and sparks. I waited for a few moments to simulate the time it would take for me to disable them. I even grabbed one of their guns and fired a few times into the air at odd times to make it seem like a real fight was still going. Then I dropped the gun and started jogging back to the clearing.

The first thing I noticed when I got into the clearing was that the Eggmech on the tower was still there. I thought the worst for a brief moment; that Marsh hadn't been able to dodge the gunfire from the tower. But then I saw a flash of grey moving quickly on the platform and knew that she was still alive, fighting the robot. I picked up my pace and got to the base of the tower right as Marsh had lept onto the Eggmech's back. Marsh was clearly trying to disconnect the main input array, a large cable that ran all of the input from the eyes and microphones built into the head of the mech into the body where it would be processed. It was a tricky thing to disconnect, what with it being near the back of the robot and all, but if you did it, it was the quickest way to disable the robot.

Marsh was getting bucked left and right as she struggled to get a grip on the panel that housed the input array and still maintain her hold on the Eggemech's rotund body. I climbed up the ladder as fast as I could. By the time I got to the top and onto the platform, the top half of the Eggmech was spinning like a top with Marsh barely able to hold on. It was spinning faster and faster, trying to buck her off. I was unsure of what to do, since if I got too close, I could easily get hit by Marsh's flying body. I crouched down low, thinking that maybe I could lunge at the legs when suddenly I heard a high-pitched yelp and saw Marsh get thrown over the side of the scaffolding. Time slowed in an instant.

My training and instincts had activated my time dilation technique. I pushed the Eggmech powerfully with a wave of my hand, sending it through the metal railing behind it and far into the trees beyond. I lept over the scaffolding after Marsh.

I can still remember how scared she looked to this day. The terrified expression on her face mingled with confusion as her brain tried to rationalize what was happening against the panicked survival instinct. Looking back there were a million other ways I could've tried to save her. Leaping after her was probably the least efficient and most dangerous way. But I wasn't thinking about that at the time. All I knew was that I needed to grab her so she wouldn't die.

She fell in slow motion before me, hands reaching towards the railing, towards the scaffolding, towards me. Her long, black hair, dancing slowly in the air, stretching towards me as well. I was falling in slow motion as well, but I had the ability to push myself faster, so I did. Faster and faster until I caught up with her. The ground loomed below, getting bigger very quickly, as I grabbed onto her with both arms. She was surprisingly soft in my grasp as I pulled her close to my body and spoke into her ear, "I've got you." I immediately picked both of us up with my power and turned the dive into a swoop; turning our momentum from downward to outwards. This gave me time to slow us down enough and land on the ground gently without any whiplash.

Time returned to normal. Marsh stood there, shocked at what had just happened.

"I can explain-" I started, but Marsh suddenly rushed past me, back towards the tower. She scaled the ladder quickly and finished planting the explosives on the console and the generator, paused only for a moment to look at the mangled metal of the railing I'd blasted the Eggmech through, then she slid back down the ladder and placed the rest of the explosives near the base of the tower.

I was amazed. In spite of what she'd just been through, what she'd just seen, she was still in the mission. While I was thinking of some heroic moment of saving the girl, she knew that we still had a job to do and she was going to do it. She was right. I _did_ buy into my hero complex more than I'd thought. She was better trained than me on keeping focused on her duty even in the face of certain death. She ran back towards me and gestured towards the trees. I ran ahead, deep into the forest where I knew I wouldn't be seen from the clearing. A short while later, Marsh came panting up beside me. She slumped against a tree and slid down to the forest floor, trying to catch her breath.

We were near where we'd first arrived and planned our approach. After only a brief rest, Marsh got back on her feet and said, "We need to keep moving." She set a brisk pace away from the clearing, evidently not following any set direction, just away from the impending explosion. I looked down at my watch. 13:59 was the readout. The bombs were due to go off at any time. I looked up at Marsh who seemed to be aware of this, based on her insistence on moving away from the blast. Suddenly, loud boom sounded behind us that shook the ground beneath our feet. In the distance, I saw black clouds of smoke rising dangerously into the air, followed by muffled bangs a few moments later. The bombs had all gone off in unison.

Marsh made a tired giggle and stumbled to a stop. She sat down on a tree stump and hung her head between her knees for a moment, breathing deep. After a short while, she shrugged off her rucksack and pulled out a canteen and drank from it. She sighed deeply as she pulled it away from her lips and closed her eyes. I leaned against a tree and laughed a little. That was a hell of a thing, setting explosives and encountering live fire. Different from training. The adrenaline was starting to wear off and I was beginning to feel tired. My laugh triggered a laugh from Marsh and we relaxed in the forest just relishing our survival for a moment. Finally, the laughing calmed down, our hysterics spent, and Marsh took another drag from her canteen. She capped it off and wiped her mouth.

"So… Do you wanna tell me what the fuck _that_ was?" She said, looking at me.


	9. 008 - This Was The First Time I Told

_008 - This Was The First Time I Told Anyone_

"Where do you want me to start?" I asked. I'd never anticipated I'd have to be explaining all of this so soon. I hadn't prepared at all.

" _What was that?_ " Marsh asked, started to sound hysterical. "You flew. You _flew_ and did… something to that Eggmech. Shot him clean through the metal railing. Are you, like, psychic or something? Telekinetic?"

"Um… No, not psychic. At least, I don't think so."

"So, what then?" I was on the spot. I couldn't think straight.

"Well, Nicole thinks that it's Chaos Energy." I said.

"You've talked to _Nicole_?" Marsh asked, amazed.

"Yeah. She thinks that it's Chaos Energy, and that's what Tails-"

"You've met _Tails_?" She asked, her jaw dropping.

"Erm… yeah…?" I said. "Did you want me to explain or…?"

"Sorry," Marsh said, shaking her head, "I'm done. Just… wow… Next you're going to tell me you dated Sally."

I laughed. "I _wish_. No, it's just those two."

"So, tell me. What is it?"

"Tails thinks that I'm like, some sort of living, breathing Chaos Emerald. That's where I get my powers from. I've had them for a couple of months now."

"A couple of _months_? So you weren't born like this?" Marsh asked.

"No. Well, kind of. I'm dead. Technically, I mean. Legally, I died two years ago."

"What?"

I took a deep breath. "Let me start from the beginning… It's kind of a long story…"

I told her about who I used to be and the accident I was in. How I first discovered I had these powers and what I decided to do with them. At first, I was worried that she wouldn't believe me. Telling it out loud to someone made me realize just how incredibly ridiculous it all was. 'I fell into some magic gas that made me a god and zapped me forward in time'. This wasn't a normal series of events and if I hadn't lived it myself, I probably would never have believed it. But, as I continued, I started rationalizing it a little. Like Tails had said, we lived in a world with literal magic. There was nothing so impossible that it couldn't happen on Mobius, it seemed. Marsh listened quietly to my story, engrossed in it. She only laughed once or twice, and then, it was a bitter, ironic kind of laugh when I told her how I passed my training and how I got into Spec Ops in the first place.

"So, you're a cheater, then?" She asked after I told her how I slowed down time to win my sparring match.

"If it's cheating to use whatever is in you to win, then sure. But then, Sonic the Hedgehog is a cheater because he's just really fast."

"Fair point." Marsh said. She looked down at her watch and picked herself up. "We should start heading back." I was taken aback.

"So, that's it? I tell you all of that and you're just going to keep moving?"

"Well, one, I need time to process it, and two, we _do_ need to get back at some point."

"I guess that's true…" I said, grabbing my rucksack and getting to my feet.

We walked on in silence for a while. This was a new kind of silence. Marsh was thinking hard and it was about me. I wanted to keep talking, honestly. This was the first time I'd gotten to talk to anyone about my power that wasn't actively monitoring or testing me. I wanted to tell her what I wanted to do with my power, what it meant to me to be given this opportunity, to explain to her the necessity of keeping it a secret. But, ultimately, I was just happy that this silence wasn't an angry, fuming one. Marsh's brow was furrowed and her eyes didn't seem to be focusing on anything.

Finally she spoke up after an hour of silence.

"So that's why you've seemed so fake…" She said, more to herself than to me.

"Excuse me?" I asked. She stopped and turned around to face me. Her face bore the signs of a 'eureka moment'.

"Fake. What had been bothering me about you from the day I first saw you. You acted confident, but your body language wasn't. I could tell there was something about you that you were trying to hide."

"I guess so." I said, thinking about it. "I'm still new at being Tekk. At being myself. This is all new to me."

"Look," Marsh said, starting to sound apologetic, "about what I said earlier… I was way out of line, I just didn't know and-"

"You were right." I interrupted her. "Look, the other night, when Harry was hassling you, I felt that I needed to step in because that's what a _hero_ would do. I didn't know you, or Harry for that matter. I just stepped up because I made a decision to use these powers to help people. But it's hard for me to actually, you know, talk to people. I don't… _relate_ to people. I never put myself out there. Before, if I'd run into a situation like you had with Harry, I would've just kept walking, assuming that I didn't know the full story and that even if I did, what could I do, you know? I was just a weak, pathetic nothing." Marsh was looking at me carefully. I'd never seen her look at anyone like that before. It sent shivers down my spine.

I continued, "But now, I have this power. And I feel like I have an obligation to use it. You said you could handle yourself with Harry, but I didn't know that. Imagine if you couldn't and I'd just walked away. Decided that it was none of my business. Then I would hear about how someone had been… had been _raped_ at the party and I would know, _would absolutely know,_ that I could've stopped it… How could I be a hero? Even if it didn't turn out that bad, it _might_ have, and I didn't know what I know now. If I'd let that pass by, even once, then it'd be easier for me to just walk past it the next time, and the next time. It wouldn't be too long until I wasn't doing anything. I was a nobody before, but now I have the opportunity to be… _somebody_. A hero. Like you said, I want to be the hero. I want people to feel safer when they see me around. I lost my parents in this stupid war. I want to make sure that never happens to anyone else." Marsh's eyes were starting to water. I suddenly remembered that she'd lost her parents too.

"Oh, Marsh, I'm sorry… I didn't mean to-" I started. Marsh held up a hand.

"No, it's fine. I just… Well, I miss them sometimes, you know." She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. She cleared her throat and blinked widely a few times.

"Sorry." She said. "Oh, and if you tell anyone at the base that I cried, I'll kill you in your sleep." She paused. " _Do you sleep?_ "

"Sometimes." I replied. "It's the only time I get to dream, so there's that. And sometimes I actually _do_ get tired."

We started walking again. There was silence again. The sunlight was now turning into a warm, amber color as the sun began sinking beyond the horizon. Nighttime was still a few hours away, but the shadows were starting to stretch along the ground.

"Why did you keep your powers a secret?" Marsh asked suddenly. "If you want to be a big, damn hero, why not just come into town and show off what you could do? Why all this cloak and dagger?"

I thought about it for a moment. I hadn't really put a lot of thought into it until this moment. Keeping a low profile just seemed to be the right thing to do. Why was I so afraid to let people know? Then it dawned on me and I felt ashamed.

"Because… Because I'm afraid." I said quietly.

"Afraid of what?" Marsh asked, incredulously, "If what you've told me is true, you can stop time, blow things up with your mind, and god knows what else. What could you be afraid of?"

"Of failing."

Marsh's pace slowed. "Oh…"

"Like, if I rushed into a burning building to save someone, but that person died anyways, in some small way, people would blame me. I mean, they'd _know_ it was the fire that killed them, but it was _me_ who gave them hope then destroyed it. That's why I'm keeping it a secret the best I can. Because once people know what I can do, they'll _expect me_ to do it _all the time_.

"Eggman is terrifying. I don't know how Sonic can be so flippant about it, honestly. We've all lost loved ones because of that monster. Once people know about me, they'll expect me to do something about him, so they could all feel safe. I could probably end this war in a couple of hours if I really tried, but that would mean killing Eggman, and I don't know if I could actually do that. I mean, I know that no one would ask me to do that, anymore than anyone's asked Sonic to, but they'd all secretly want it. But, since no one would expect me to, they'd probably keep me on hand to swat missiles out of the air or provide cover for all of our military."

"Well, yeah," Marsh said, "that's what a hero would do."

"But it only takes one missile getting past me, one soldier to die under my watch, and suddenly, I'm the one who let this happen. I'd try my hardest, but there are scenarios where I still fail, then people hate me. They'd blame me because they'd be hurting and I'd be closer to them than Eggman or the Dark Legion or whoever, and it'd be easier to hate me. I don't think I can deal with that."

I felt kind of stupid saying all of this in front of Marsh. This was a woman, I kept reminding myself, that I had now spent less than an entire day with, and already I was telling her my deepest fears. But I couldn't keep anything in. I don't know if it was because she broke down the floodgates on my thoughts and feelings or if it was because it was _her_ that I was talking to, but I couldn't hold anything back.

"I think," Marsh started, "I think that it comes down to what people think of you _before_ the disaster strikes. Some people are going to hate you no matter what. That's just a fact. Hell, even Sonic has his fair share of detractors in New Mobotropolis. But, I mean… Look, Sonic isn't infallible. None of the Freedom Fighters are. The original ones, I mean. All of them turned against the people at one point or another, right? But we all forgave them for their flaws. No matter what happened, we all believed that they were still good people down inside. So the next time Sonic makes a mistake and people get hurt, they just roll with it. But, that's the problem. People know Sonic. No one knows you. What I said before is the common conception of you right now, actually.

"Your squad hates you. Well, they _dislike_ you…"

"Sarah probably hates me."

"The skunk? Oh yeah. But, to be fair, she hates everything. You don't ever talk about yourself and you never ask them about themselves. You seem aloof. And when you couple that with your performance it makes it seem like you're avoiding them because you're _better_ than them. And that breeds resentment. People around you see it too, to a lesser extent. Hell, that's why I started watching you in the first place. I couldn't figure out why someone who clearly wanted to be the big-shot wasn't even kissing up to the right people." She laughed. "Imagine how pissed I was when I reported you for non-compliance and being derelict of duty on your reconnaissance missions only for your CO's to tell me to stuff it because your reports were always so detailed and so _accurate_. That made me so mad and confused at the same time. I was like, _how?!_ But now it makes sense."

I shot Marsh a confused look. Where was she going with this?

"Sorry." She said, realizing the sudden digression, "My point is, if you want to be a hero, you need to start treating other people like they're _worth_ saving. Otherwise, you're not a hero, you're just a showoff. You need someone who can back you up when a missile gets past you or a soldier dies under your watch. Someone who can say, 'he's usually so good, this was just a mistake,' instead of a bunch of people rooting for you to fail because they want to see you eat dirt."

"How do I do that?" I asked.

"How do you make friends?" Marsh asked, jokingly. Then she saw the look on my face. I'd never had friends before. I'd never really had the chance. Her smile disappeared. "Sorry… Look, I'll try and help you. You can be my side-project. Really, the first step is just talking to people. Here's your homework. Tomorrow, you're going to talk to someone in your squad. You're going to learn three things about them that you didn't already know and then report back to me."

I didn't like the sound of this… But it was necessary. Marsh was absolutely right. I needed people to know who I was before I could do anything great. A thought occurred to me.

"Hey Marsh," I asked, "If you're helping me, does this mean you're done hating me now?"

Marsh laughed. "Yeah, I guess so."

The trees were getting thinner and the sky darker. Soon, we'd be at the rendezvous point for pickup. Another thought occurred to me as I saw the lights of the transport truck up ahead.

"Marsh? One last thing?"

"Shoot." She said.

"Please don't tell anyone else about what I can do."

She looked at me sideways and smirked. "Whatever you say, _hero_."

 **Kind of a shorter chapter today. To be fair, though, my first draft was only like, three paragraphs long, so I did my best to kind of stretch it out a little.**

 **I wanted to apologize for the long break between Chapters 6 and 7. Holidays and finals just kind of kept me from writing anything.**

 **Thanks to all the people who have read this far. We'll be closing up Act 1 soon and moving into Act 2, so get ready.**


	10. 009 - This Was How I Helped Tails

_009 - This Was How I Helped Tails_

"So, you're making friends, then?" Tails said, turning around from his computer to face me.

"Kind of. I guess…" I replied, feeling kind of embarrassed. This wasn't the kind of discussion I intended to have with a ten year old.

A few weeks had passed since that mission I went on with Marsh. I had been applying what she had been teaching me in the confines of my squad. Things were starting to come around. I had sat down with them at meal time and told them all that I was sorry if I'd been coming off as an ass. I explained that I had some social anxiety when it came to meeting new people and I was trying to work on it. Most of the squad was willing to meet me halfway and I was able to report back to Marsh that Darx seemed to be able to "hear machinery" as he put it. Hailey had some sort of innate ability to know where pressure points were on just about anybody. And Sarah still hated me. A lot. But it was getting better. Each day I sat down with them and told them a little about my hobbies (or rather the hobbies that I had from before) and ask them about themselves. After a while, Darx, the friendliest of the bunch, was inviting me over for things and asking about my opinion on small stuff. It felt good to be part of a group.

"Well, that's good." Tails said, standing up and grabbing a wrench from the table. He turned to the new Chaos Syphon he was building and started loosening some bolts on the chassis. The old Chaos Syphon, he'd explained, was a prototype. This one was the end result all along. It looked like a large set of bagpipes, only instead of a cloth bag, it was a large glass ball in the middle. A handle at the back and one near the front allowed it to be towed along, but it was still heavy and cumbersome. There was a lot of reinforcements and shields in place to stop any radiation from leaking out and to prevent any explosive pressure from breaching the glass ball. There would be a lot of energy being housed inside and if it found a weak spot, for sure it would spell danger for the wielder.

"I dunno. It feels like I'm not being genuine, you know? I mean, I'm making a concentrated effort to know about them instead of it just happening naturally."

"I think that it's better than nothing." Tails said, checking some wiring inside the Syphon, "Not everyone has the talent for making friends. I know for my part I always had issues with new people."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. Sonic helped me break out of my shell a little and I learned a lot about how to make friends just from watching him. Focusing on others is how you draw them closer to you. Kind of a paradox, when you think about it. The more love you give, the more you get. But the more you keep, the less you have."

I thought about that.

"You're really wise, you know that? Kind of precocious." Tails just laughed.

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

"So," I said, turning to the new Syphon, "Do you think this one will fix the issues you ran into last time?"

"No…" Tails said, disappointed. "The Emeralds are just missing whatever bond the natural Emeralds have."

The Chaos Emeralds we'd made from my energy had behaved just like the synthetic ones. They stored power, but were unable to regenerate it within their own structure. Tails had been really disappointed when we discovered that. The Emeralds we did make, however, contained more energy than anything Tails had been able to come up with on his own.

"But, I'm staying positive. I have a nearly limitless supply of Chaos Energy with me, so I've got the opportunity to study it more closely."

"What's on the agenda for today?"

"You mentioned that you haven't gotten sick and rarely get fatigued, right?"

"Yes." I said.

"I have a theory that Chaos Energy will repair and maintain its container. I've never seen a Chaos Emerald break, and I haven't ever seen any abrasions or scuffing on the gems themselves. For your part, even though you push your body to its limit, you're never exhausted or sore. The Chaos Energy must be repairing the damage to your muscle tissue."

"You haven't tested this before?"

"Well, no. I've had the opportunity before, with the real Emeralds from time to time, and of course, with my Synthetic ones, but I was always too scared to break one. For the real ones, on the off chance that my hypothesis was absolutely wrong, I could possibly destroy the entire Emerald, irreplaceably. For the Synthetic Emeralds… Well, I just didn't want to waste a Synthetic Emerald on a test that could possibly result in its destruction."

"Well, we know that Chaos Emeralds can break, don't we? I mean, Knuckles has had to track down Emerald Shards to piece the Master Emerald back together again a few times, right?" I mentioned.

"That was the Master Emerald. It contains properties beyond the Chaos Emeralds. It's possible that being able to fuse its constituent parts is unique to the Master Emerald and none other. And you wouldn't _believe_ how upset Knuckles got when I asked if I could perform tests on it…" Tails rolled his eyes and sighed.

"So the test for today is as follows. We drain your energy, put it into one of the empty quartz gems I have here. Then, we're going to cut it apart, from behind ballistics glass, of course, and observe what happens."

"Wait," I said, remembering something, "When the Master Emerald shattered, it released enough energy to scatter the shards across the world, didn't it?"

"The ballistics glass is quite thick." Tails said, putting on his goggles and tightening the bolts of the Chaos Syphon. "Ready when you are."

I sighed and stepped into the yellow box on the floor. The new, portable Syphon came to life with a loud hum. A bolt of turquoise lightning jumped from my body and into the Syphon. After a few seconds, Tails deactivated the machine. I gasped for air and sat down in a nearby chair for a moment while I caught my breath.

"You okay?" Tails asked, removing the newly formed Chaos Emerald from the rear of the Syphon. The large, cut gem was glowing a brilliant turquoise color, same as the lightning that had shot from me to the Syphon.

"I just never get used to that." I said. "It's like running a mile in a few seconds."

"I know a guy who can do that…" Tails smirked.

"I know. I'd like to meet him some day."

"One of these days, I'm sure you will. I think you're a too valuable a resource to not be on the front lines with us." Tails said, placing the Chaos Emerald underneath a remote controlled sawblade.

"You really think so?" I asked, trying not to sound too eager.

"Absolutely. I'm honestly still getting used to having a military force behind us. It used to be just five kids living in a hole in the woods." Tails said, stepping behind the ballistics glass and beckoning me towards him. It still felt so weird listening to him talk about the Freedom Fighters like an old Veteran recounting the good old days. "I'm sure once you're ready, you'd be able to change the tide of this war. You might even be able to end it single-handedly." I felt a pang of fear rise in the back of my mind.

"Ready?" Tails asked, holding up the remote.

"Hang on…" I threw up a shield in front of the ballistics glass and focused on it, reinforcing it the best we could. I was worried that the Chaos Energy might escape, violently and explosively. God forbid we'd just figured out how to make a Chaos Bomb.

"Beginning saw, now." Tails said, pressing a button. The saw came to life with a loud, piercing whine.

"Lowering saw!" Tails yelled, barely audible over the saw. The robotic arm slowly lowered the saw blade towards the glowing gem. Sparks flew as the saw came into contact with the gem and started to slice through it. It was slow going, but at least it wasn't exploding. After a few minutes, a change in the sound of the saw heralded the end of the cutting process.

"Terminating saw!" Tails shouted, pressing a button on the controller. The arm raised itself and the saw came to a spinning stop.

"Let's see what we have, shall we?" Tails said, taking off his goggles. I followed him over to the work bench and saw the Chaos Emerald. It was in one piece.

"How in the…?" I asked. Tails was already on his computer pulling up footage from the experiment.

"Let's see here." He said, scrubbing through the video until he got to the part where the saw cut clean through the Emerald. "Slowing things down… And zooming in…" He pressed a few buttons on the computer.

We watched the saw lift away from the Emerald in slow motion. Both sides of the Emerald immediately began to shift towards each other quickly, like two magnets attracted to each other. They snapped back together and the seam vanished in only a few frames of footage.

"Ah ha!" Tails said. "They _do_ fix themselves!"

"I wonder what happens if they're further apart than that. The Master Emerald needed all the pieces to be in close proximity to repair itself, right?"

"Good question. Let's set up again and find out."

Tails set up the experiment again, only this time, he secured each part of the Emerald separately, so when the saw cut through them they couldn't move. He then attached those parts to a scale, so we could measure the joining force of the gems. We approached the Emerald halves after the saw had stopped spinning. Tails checked the reading on the scales.

"Wow… Okay, well, I guess that makes sense…" Tails said.

"What?" I asked.

"There's not a lot of force going on here…" Tails replied, grabbing one of the Chaos Emerald halves. He unstrapped it from the restraints and lifted it away easily from the other half.

"It says there's a little under a pound of force from these halves trying to reunite." He placed his half down on the far end of the work bench. It flopped over onto one side and very slowly started to pull itself towards the other half.

"What are the Chaos Energy readings on both halves?" I asked.

"Good question," Tails said, placing a book in front of the slowly crawling Chaos Emerald half. It stopped against the weight of the book. He went to his computer and started looking at some charts.

"Looks like both sides have equal amounts of Chaos Energy. There's no loss between the two. It's not divided or anything. I wonder if you could pull some of the Energy out of one of the halves, Tekk?"

I picked up the other side and tried to reabsorb the Chaos Energy trapped inside the gem. I felt it leak into my hand with a radiating heat.

"Ooooh, neat!" Tails said, excitedly. "The other half is responding. Even when they're not together, they share the same pool of Chaos Energy. And this transfer is happening instantly! Do you realize what this means?" Tails asked, eyes wide with energy.

"I… No."

"This could be a new form of communication! I'll need to run some more tests to be sure, but if this data holds up over greater distance, we might have discovered a way around communication delays! Instantaneous communication from anywhere. From here to Downunda without the slightest loss in signal or delay. Or to the moon! Or even further!"

A lot of this was lost on me, but Tails was excited, so that was what was important.

"Nicole! Did you see this?" Tails asked to the air.

Nicole's slim figure materialized next to us, wearing her purple dress.

"I did see. This is very exciting, Tails." She said, smiling.

"Hi, Tekk. Doing good work, I see?" Nicole said, looking at me. Tails was rushing over to the computer and pulling up spreadsheets of data.

"Just trying to do my part." I said, sheepishly.

"And how's Miss Wolfram?" She asked slyly. Tails looked up from his computer.

"Who's Miss Wolfram?" He asked curiously.

"A friend." I said.

"A friend, nothing. I've seen the way you look at her." Nicole said. "I recognize what that look means." She was teasing me.

"Nicole, if you'd heard what she'd said to me when we went on our mission, I'm sure you wouldn't be thinking what I know you're thinking. She's my friend. Nothing more. Even then, 'friend' might be stretching it."

Nicole looked disappointed. "I sometimes think I'll never understand you organic creatures. I thought it was obviously some sort of infatuation based on the way she had watched you a month ago. But I must have come to the wrong conclusion…"

"Who is Miss Wolfram?" Tails asked again, looking more confused.

"The only other person who knows about Tekk's abilities." Nicole said.

"How did you know that?" I asked, shocked.

"I didn't until just now." Nicole said, grinning slyly. "Though I had my suspicions when her behavior towards you suddenly changed after that mission. No one goes from obsessively watching someone and making defamatory reports on them to helping them make friends overnight without some sort of reason."

"Wait, so someone else knows?" Tails asked, concern in his voice, "Should we be worried that she's a security risk?"

"No." Both me and Nicole said in unison.

"She's in Spec-Pro, just like Tekk here," Nicole said, "If there's a better group of people to keep a secret, it's them. Besides, she likes Tekk, even if she won't admit it."

"Stop it." I demanded. "Seriously. She's my friend, and that's it. Nothing else is going on."

Tails looked at me, then at Nicole.

"I don't get you adults sometimes…" He muttered.

"Seriously, think about it, though." Nicole said to me, losing the playfulness in her voice. "The data all adds up. No one devotes that much time and energy into someone else unless there's some sort of affection there. Trust me when I say I've seen my fair share of exactly that."

I paused. This was Nicole I was talking to. She had been, originally, a computer companion to Sally Acorn. She had been witness to almost all of the relationship ups and downs of New Mobotropolis' favorite on-again-off-again royal couple. Maybe she did know something about how people act when they're in love, but don't want to admit it. Still, I had to force myself to not read into this. It was a story that I wanted to believe all too much, and if I did, it could easily destroy the small progress I'd made with Marsh. I would rather be just her friend than to lose all connection with her. That realization struck me a lot harder than I'd thought.

"She's just a friend." I reinforced. "Let's leave it at that."

"Alright, alright…" Nicole said, hands up defensively. She turned to Tails.

"So what can I do to help facilitate the research into this new form of communication?"

While they talked between themselves, I tried to find something to get my mind off of Marsh. I wandered around Tails' lab, looking at all the different gadgets he'd been working on. Machinery and half finished robots littered every workbench and corner. I looked at some blueprints he had of something called, "Buddy-Bot". I chuckled at the concept. Then, I saw something buried in the back of the lab, covered in a dusty, white canvas. I approached it and peeked under the cloth.

I saw a large golden ring suspended between two large lampposts with blue orbs atop them. I'd never seen such a thing before. I'd heard about Power Rings, the rare and wondrous magic artefacts that cropped up in Mobius from time to time, but I never thought I'd see one in person. It was a lot bigger than I was led to believe.

"Oh, Tekk, I wouldn't get too close to that!" Tails shouted from across the lab.

"Why, what is it?" I asked, dropping the sheet and turning around. Tails was bustling towards me, dancing around the debris scattered around the ground. Nicole simply glided over to me.

"Those are the Star Posts." Tails said, winded, "It's the gateway to the Special Zone, Cosmic Highway, and beyond that to the Multiverse."

"The Multiverse?"

"Look," Nicole said, "The Star Posts are a very powerful device. It was used to get to the Special Zone, where we Sonic could petition the guardian there for Chaos Emeralds."

"That's right," Continued Tails, "It also allowed us to move between parallel dimensions, what we'd call the Multiverse. For the most part, this wasn't an issue… Until the Anti-Freedom Fighters showed up and started wreaking havoc."

"I think they're called the Suppression Squad, now." Nicole chimed in. Tails looked annoyed.

"They're from Moebius, the polar opposite of our universe. There, Sonic was the world's worst villain, who overthrew the king and his band of friends went around creating as much chaos and destruction as possible. When they got bored, they came here and had fun impersonating us and trying to ruin our lives. We had to beat them back. They came back from time to time and it was always a struggle to keep them in line. Eventually, the No Zone Police had to rule a lockdown on the Cosmic Highway to stop them from invading other worlds. We decided to dismantle the Star Posts as best as we could on our end to further complicate any further invasion. The less we have to do with Moebius, the better."

"Wait, so there's, like, infinite dimensions out there?"

"I don't know about infinite, but a lot yes. I was excited, initially, at the prospect of collaborating with other Tails' from other dimensions. But the risks far outweighed the benefits. Just leave it alone, Tekk. Nothing good ever comes from messing with the Star Posts." Tails said sadly.

I turned away and followed them back to the computer. I was still trying to comprehend what I'd heard. An inverse Mobius… That meant that there was another Tekk out there. I wonder if he became weakened or even killed from his encounter with whatever their version of Chaos Energy was. Or did he become powerful like me, but because he was evil, destroyed everything. Then, a smaller doubt in the back of my mind: What if he saved his world, and I'm destined to destroy mine because _I'm the evil one_?

 **I swear I'm not making it a habit to leave post-chapter notes. It drives me nuts when other authors do that, but I did feel like I needed to apologize for what felt like a filler chapter. I promise I'll get back to actual plot progression starting the next chapter, as we enter ACT II.**

 _ **READER FINISHED ACT 1!**_


	11. 010 - This Was After My First Year

ACT 2

" _The measure of a man is what he does with power."_

 _010 - This Was After My First Year_

I had gotten accustomed to my new life as Tekk. Before I knew it, winter had come and gone. It's amazing how quickly life goes when you live week by week instead of day by day. I wouldn't say there was a routine in my life, as missions I was sent on came at irregular intervals. Sometimes I'd go alone, sometimes I was paired with a partner, sometimes it was a squad. I was starting to get a better idea of how the Freedom Fighters were fighting this war: they weren't.

Everything was sabotage. Stopping supply lines, destroying enemy installations, blowing up factories. But these were all easily replaceable by the seemingly limitless resources of the Eggman Empire. We were told, occasionally, that the missions we were being sent on had been a crippling blow to Eggman, but I never saw any lasting damage. There were always more robots to fight, more enemies to push back, and more obstacles to overcome. Maybe I wasn't seeing the bigger picture, but I was secretly starting to doubt that those in command had any idea of how to fight a war.

I had gotten much better acquainted with my squad by the time that spring was turning into summer. In fact, we were starting to become a more cohesive unit and I had finally understood why each member of my squad was selected for Spec-Pro.

You had Kline who had run the obstacle course the fastest. He was insanely quick-footed. He wasn't quite Sonic speed, but he probably could've given him a run for his money. He was usually the best for recon missions, since he could get in and out before anyone saw him.

Darx was the other squirrel. He had jet-black fur and an uncanny ability to read machinery. There wasn't anything he couldn't fix or dismantle. Someone at some point called him a 'technopath' and that title stuck.

Sarah, the punk rock skunk, had a fuck-you attitude and a real penchant for mayhem. She didn't fear death and worked explosives like a master painter. Between her and Darx, we called them the Wrecking Crew. If we wanted it destroyed, they'd figure out a way.

Finally there was Hailey, the quiet coyote. She was a crazy fighter. Despite her air-headed demeanor, she seemed to have every weak point on a body memorized and could leap from target to target with a terrifying ferocity.

After a few months of working with my squad, I was promoted to "Specialist" which was essentially a squad leader. (Yes, a Special Projects Specialist. Everyone knew how ridiculous it sounded.) I found that despite my intense power, there was no replacement for actual talent. But with my remote viewing ability, I was a master tactician, being able to "anticipate" enemy movements on the field. In the handful of missions I'd run with my squad I was able to utilize everyone's ability to the utmost efficiency. Nicole told me once that it was like watching a symphony of destruction and mayhem after one particularly successful mission. Most of my squad had grown to trust me, if not like me. Sarah still acted as though she hated me, but I got the feeling that it was a front.

Sometimes they'd break up the squad and we'd have to do missions with other Spec-Pro agents. I was always ecstatic to be paired up with Marsh, since those were usually the easiest missions. She liked to hang back and let me go to town on whatever we had to accomplish. Since these missions were usually either a surveillance or demolition mission, she could relax while I watched or destroyed something with my power. She especially liked watching me dismantle the Eggmechs. She liked how they just kind of "came undone" and fell apart.

Marsh and I became better friends over that time. At first we were meeting every week at a small cafe near her house to discuss how my "friend-making" was going. But after time these discussions became less and less about how I was getting on with my squad-mates and more conversational about ourselves. Eventually, she said that I probably didn't need her help anymore, and we started meeting a little less frequently, but spending more time together when we did meet up.

Working with Tails had continued too, although at a more relaxed pace. After discovering the concept of instantaneous communication, it seemed like Tails wanted to focus on that, although he kept upgrading and revising his Chaos Syphon. He'd gotten it even more efficient and it barely took any time at all to charge a new Emerald.

In short, my first year as Tekk was idyllic. I had friends for the first time and a clear purpose in my life. I was recognized by my peers as worthwhile. I was happy.

I met Marsh at our cafe one evening in late spring. We always enjoyed this place because of how out-of-the way it was. There was very little risk of being overheard when we discussed my power. Also the food was decently priced and the storefront overlooked a nearby lake. The setting sun was reflecting a bright yellow-orange over the surface and illuminating the booth where we sat.

Marsh took a sip of coffee as we talked about my position as Specialist.

"So, be honest, how often do you use your power to complete your missions?" She asked, grinning over her cup.

"Discounting when we get paired together?" I asked, nibbling at a biscotti, the chocolate sweet in my mouth.

"Sure."

I paused and thought.

"Probably, like… sixty percent of the time?" I said finally, crunching into the treat.

"Really?"

"Yeah," I sipped some of my own coffee, washing away the sweetness with bitterness, "I mean, if we're counting _any_ usage at all. Remote viewing, strength enhancements, that sort of thing. If we're talking about straight up removing obstacles or accomplishing the mission parameters solely on my power, then it's a lot lower."

"Wow. I assumed you'd be leaning on it like a crutch." She chuckled.

"Well, a lot of it depends on the mission. Now that I'm directly in charge of my squad, I use remote viewing a lot more. Getting caught by an ambush could be devastating."

"How does that work, exactly? Is it like being able to turn your head really fast or…?

"It's kind of hard to explain…" I said, trying to figure out how to describe it, "It's kind of like having multiple monitors hooked up to a computer, with different displays. I can see them all in front of me, so to speak, and movement stands out like a sore thumb. There's also a lot of intuition involved. Sometimes I'll just get the sense that something's amiss and when I focus in on that… uh… _screen_ … I notice what first caught my attention. A tripwire or a camouflaged Eggmech or something."

"Huh…" She said, looking at me.

"It's really hard to explain. I mean, how would you explain to someone who's blind how you can see things in your range of vision?"

"You've got a point."

"I mean, I try not to use my powers too much during missions, since it's, you know… _cheating_."

Marsh laughed. I laughed with her, but I got the feeling that we were laughing for distinctly separate reasons. She was still looking at me with those icy eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing…" She said, grinning, and draining the rest of her coffee, "Just… you."

And for the first time I realized that she was looking at me different. There was a soft intensity in her gaze. Like she was thinking hard about something that had to do with me. I felt my heart skip a beat and my face go hot. I nervously broke eye contact.

I needed to stop doing this to myself. Even after a full year of talking with her, a full year of her being my best friend, I still caught myself fantasizing of holding her. Of kissing her. Of proclaiming some everlasting love. Every time it cropped up I had to stamp it down. I was afraid, sometimes, that she'd figure out that I still had a crush on her and that I'd be back to square one again. I had a vivid vision of her suddenly sitting up straight and saying something like, "Maybe we shouldn't hang out so much anymore." And hurriedly leaving. The thought of that happening broke my heart, so I never so much as hinted about how I felt around her anymore. _We are friends_ , I told myself again. _Just friends. Stop it._

"Oh," I said, seeing the waiter come closer to our table, "The check is here." I grabbed the billfold he handed me and stuffed some cash inside. I stood up and dusted crumbs off my shirt. Marsh had stopped looking at me, but she still had that same ponderous expression on her face.

The air was pleasantly cool as the sun sank lower into the violet sky. The slightest breeze carried the coolness of the air as the lake reflected a fiery orange light at us as we stepped outside. We started walking towards Marsh's house a few blocks away when the streetlamps came on.

I tried to talk to her about different things on the way to her house, but every subject was met with a distracted answer. She was thinking about something and I was too nervous to ask her what she was thinking about. I'd never seen her act this way before. I glanced at her, seeing her black hair catch the orange from the setting sun and seeing her grey fur glow with a pale orange. She looked more fox than wolf in this light. I glanced away when she looked at me. I didn't say anything for a long time. The entire walk was filled with a strange intensity. A premonition that something was about to fundamentally change between us crossed my mind, but I stamped out that feeling too.

We turned onto her street, her house at the end of the block. The street was lined with flat, boxy looking one-story houses. They all looked pretty uniform, with slight variations in design and decoration, covered in stucco and with a shallow slant of a roof. We arrived at her front door and I turned to go, when she grabbed my arm.

"Hey, Tekk?" She asked.

"Yeah?"

She paused for a long time, looking down at her feet.

"You know…" She started, "You know, I was really upset at you for playing the hero that time."

How could I forget?

"Well, I wanted to say I'm sorry. That was really unfair to you back then. Even though I could've taken Harry on, especially when he was drunk." She added quickly.

"Just… I didn't have to because you were there to help. Honestly, I was angry at myself for letting myself get into that situation at all, not at you for doing what any person should've done in that situation."

"Well…" I said, my mouth turning unpleasantly dry, "I just did what any friend would do." She looked up into my eyes. My heart was pounding in my chest for some reason.

"No… Not just any friend." She edged closer to me. My heart was screaming and white fuzz seemed to be filling my brain. What was going on? Part of my brain knew the answer and was screaming loudly.

"Not…" I was having a hard time forming words. "Just… a friend…?" She was so close to me now, her eyelids half closed. Somehow that only intensified the color of her eyes. A smile slowly spreading on her face.

"Mmmm…" She said, leaning close to me. I felt myself lean towards her.

This was happening. This was _actually happening_. The millions of scenarios racing behind the static in my head suddenly came to a crashing stop as I pressed my lips to hers. I wasn't much like how I'd expected my first kiss to go. The kissing part itself, I mean. I had expected some kind of electric jolt run through me. A spark traveling from her to me or vice versa. It was actually just warm and kind of wet. Compared to what everything had told me to expect, it was kind of disappointing. Then, suddenly, my brain kicked back online and I could comprehend the situation. My heart felt like it was exploding and that tiny part of my brain that I kept trying to deny and shut down was running a victory lap. I'd never felt so happy. Nights of frustration and weeks of waiting and carefully watching what I'd say and planning what I'd do finally paid off. I wanted this moment to last forever.

Eventually, though, we broke apart. She giggled nervously as she saw my face. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it lightly to affirm that what had just happened was real. "Good night, Tekk." She said quietly as she opened the door to her house.

"Good night, Marsh." I replied, my brain rebooting.

She closed the door behind her and I stood on her porch for a moment, trying to get critical systems back online. Eventually, my feet started moving and I began walking home. I was down the street before I felt remotely normal again, the shock finally faded away. I smile spread across my face despite myself and I felt the desire to add a small hop to my step. I felt like dancing. In fact, if this had been a movie, I'm sure there would've been a musical number building up right then, where I'd sing and dance all the way home.

I somehow refrained from embarrassing myself all the way home. I opened the door, bursting with joy, and closed it behind me. Then I jumped and raced around my house, arm pumping, wooping, and dancing a little jig everywhere I went. It was like there was an excess of energy in me and I needed to let it out or I'd explode. I was privately grateful that Marsh wasn't here to see this. That _no one_ was here to see this. Finally, I settled down and flopped onto my couch smiling from ear to ear.

I had purpose. I had a job. I had friends. I had a girl. I was everything Ivan had ever wanted to be.


	12. 011 - This Was the Happiest I'd Ever Be

_011 - This Was the Happiest I'd Ever Be_

Before I continue, I feel I owe you an explanation. Even though this was the highlight of my life, the prime of my power and happiness, I find it extraordinarily painful to discuss it, even now, as I sit atop this monument of dust and desolation. I find myself skipping over large swaths of time, not because there was nothing noteworthy that occurred then, but because I have relived those short months over and over again, and every time it brings me pain. It's the dramatic irony that taints every memory as I think back at how happy I was, knowing now that it wasn't meant to last.

I wish to impress upon you how I felt then, without wallowing in an era that I know with a terrible certainty, that I cannot return to. Perhaps it was a mistake to tell you about my first kiss with Marsh, but I felt it necessary to establish that there was a friendship that was the foundation for our romantic relationship, which culminated in a night only a few months later. This is the part of my life in the height of my naivete which causes me the most heartache and anguish as I recall it. So I've chosen to skip over the countless walks in the late spring, the evenings catching fireflies and making each other laugh. The meals we'd shared, the work we'd accomplished together, the long discussions we'd had and the plans we'd made. I pass over these not because they never happened, or because they weren't in themselves noteworthy, but because I fear that the pain of reliving those memories could prove to be a quagmire that I doubt I could ever escape.

This one memory, however, I share with you, because I feel that my actions that follow in the events afterwards might not be fully understood otherwise. I apologize for the digression, and now continue my story on the night of the annual gala.

The party was in full swing by the time that I arrived with Marsh on my arm. I was dressed in a tuxedo that I'd rented for the event, and while I had to admit I looked good in it, I found it stifling in the summer night air. Marsh was wearing her sleeveless black dress, cut low in the back. Her long black hair was done up in a very complicated knot. With her on my arm, I felt like the entire ball was thrown just for us. And, I supposed that in a way, it was. My hand drifted to my inner pocket for the hundredth time, feeling the little suede-covered box it concealed.

I felt a strange kind of panic about that box and what it contained. I knew that, logically, things don't fall out of pockets all that often, and even when they do, I could usually see them and pick them up before I lose them. I knew that no one else knew that I even had it with me, except for Tails and Nicole, so theft was unlikely. But that didn't stop me from panicking every few seconds and needing reassurance that it was still on my person. No amount of power could overcome that.

We stepped into the ballroom from the garden and saw the dozens of our peers mingling with each other, while a few danced in the center of the room to a waltz. The lighting on the walls and floor was soft and made everything appear as though it were glowing a soft gold. Marsh and I noticed a few new faces milling anxiously near the buffet.

"Oh, looks like new members of Spec-Pro." She mentioned as we moved towards the food. I started filling up a plate. Marsh shot me a look as I approached the cocktail shrimp. I calmly took four and placed them quietly on my plate and moved on, not making eye contact.

"If those are the new guys, that must mean you'll be moving up to the live-fire missions." She said, spooning potatoes onto her plate.

"Oh, yeah… That's going to complicate things." I mentioned, a little worry in my voice.

Live-fire missions were what we called any engagements with the Dark Egg Legion. The Legionnaires were echidnas, once embroiled in a long-standing civil war that revolved around the traditionalist usage of the Chaos Emeralds to fuel their society and the usage of technology. I'd read about it briefly once, and it seemed like both sides only proved the other side right by becoming monsters. The technologically superior Dark Legion had utilized enhancements to become more akin to cyborgs than echidnas. But more recently the Chaos-fueled deity Enerjak had stripped them of their cybernetic enhancements and banished most of them to Albion. The ones that stayed behind, desperate, turned to the Eggman Empire for help. Eggman had welcomed them with open arms and fitted them with enhancements to replace their old ones in return for loyalty.

The real issue with live-fire missions was that the enemies weren't simply robots, but living, breathing Mobians. Since the official stance of the Freedom Fighter army was that no lethal action could be taken against living combatants, engaging them was always more tricky than engaging the Eggmechs. Eggmechs could be dismantled, blown up or otherwise destroyed. The Legionnaires, on the other hand, could only be eliminated via non-lethal methods. More flash-bang grenades, knockout gas and tranquilizer weapons had to be utilized, but all of these were faulty to some degree. Some Legionnaires had enhancements to dampen the flash-bang grenades, others had air filtration systems installed in their lungs, and since metal was everywhere in their bodies, nothing but guesswork applied when it came to aiming a tranquilizer dart. I had yet to test out the extent of my powers on other living beings. So this meant that any engagement with them would be very tricky indeed.

"I'm sure you'll do fine." Marsh said, patting my arm and walking towards an empty table. "I mean, look at me. I've been doing live-fire missions for over two years now. Still no fatalities."

"How do you do it?" I asked, half in mock awe of her boasting, but fully aware that the other half was desperate for answers.

"A blow to the back of the head knocks pretty much anyone out, cyborg or not." She said nonchalantly taking a bite of her dinner. I smiled, but was still worried.

We conversed over the dinner about the usual things. How the war was going, what missions we'd been on, people we hated at work. I glanced around at the ball and saw members of my squad among the crowds. Sarah had apparently come with Harry who was, thankfully, sober. The way he was following her around made it plain that he was a little afraid of her, despite being nearly twice her size. Hailey was listening to Kline talk animatedly in the corner and passively nodding to whatever it was he was saying. I could see Darx out on the balcony with a pink-haired echidna. Maybe it was just the lighting on the glass, but I could swear that I could see metal gleaming from some of her dreadlock-esque spines; a notable trait of the Legion. But I shrugged it off. Surely Darx wasn't fraternizing with the Legion, and even if he was, even he wouldn't be stupid enough to bring one to a Freedom Fighter event.

My hand strayed to my pocket again. I still felt the box. I took a breath of relief.

Soon, dinner was finished. Someone in a white linen shirt came by to take away our plates and clear our table. Marsh and I stood up and moved towards the center of the ballroom where the dancing was. I took her by the hand and waist and started sweeping her around the marble floor. She seemed almost surprised that we were dancing.

"Tekk, I don't really dance…"

"Hey," I said, "Just keep your eyes on me and let me lead."

"Everyone is watching…" She said, surprisingly shy.

"Keep your eyes on mine, don't worry about them. No one is watching us anyway." I told her reassuringly. It took me a few seconds to find the rhythm and the tempo, but soon we were moving in time with the music. I was fairly confident that no one was watching us. There were a dozen other dancers on the floor and everyone else was busy with their own affairs. I was surprised at how bashful Marsh had suddenly got.

Marsh wasn't very graceful, but she kept up. Countless missions together had given us some sort of unconscious synchronization, and eventually she started catching on to the patterns of the dance.

"How do you know how to dance?" She asked as the song was coming to an end.

"I've been practicing all month." I admitted.

The song ended and a new one came on with a faster tempo. I looked around.

"Uh oh." I said.

"What?"

I grabbed Marsh's hand and quickly exited the dancefloor.

"That's a quickstep… I don't know that one."

"A quickstep?"

"Or a foxtrot. I can't really tell."

"You don't know how to foxtrot?" Marsh asked, bemused, as I led her through the crowds towards the outdoor balcony.

"I'm a fox. I can trot. But I cannot _foxtrot_." I said distractedly. Marsh giggled.

"Must be the badger in you." She said offhandedly.

"The badger in me helps me bowl through a crowd." I said, reaching the open doors. Marsh looked around as if suddenly aware that we were on the other side of the ballroom.

"Huh," she said, "seems that way."

The night air was cooler than the air inside the ballroom, even though it was undeniably warm. I looked to where Darx had been earlier and saw him and the echidna walking towards the steps to the garden. Certainly, I saw metal.

"Did you-?" I started, turning to Marsh, but was interrupted by her kissing me. I melted a little and kissed her back. She finally pulled away.

"Sorry, what were you saying?"

"I can't remember."

We leaned against the stone railing and looked out at the night. The moon was hanging high in the sky. I was disappointed that it wasn't full, but what could I do? At least the sky was clear and the billions of stars were twinkling brightly on us. Marsh sighed.

"What a night, huh?" she said, leaning against me.

"Yeah…" I agreed. "But you know what would be really cool? Just going home and watching a movie or something." Marsh looked at me.

"Really?" She said, smirking.

"Yeah, we could change into something more comfortable, less restricting and just relax without any sort of pressure."

"You really don't like that tuxedo, do you?"

"It's like a small, satin prison, really." I said, plucking at the sleeves. "The nanite one from last year was much more comfortable." I pouted.

"You should tell Nicole to open up a tailor shop. She's got potential, I think. If only she'd apply herself." Marsh said.

"Lazy omniscient intelligence." I muttered loudly. Marsh chuckled and I smiled. Back inside we heard the band start playing a new song. My hand lightly patted my pocket again. It was still safe.

"We should probably head back inside," Marsh said, "I'm sure they'll be doing speeches soon."

"I've got a better idea." I said, grabbing Marsh's hand and leading her to a far corner where the balcony met the exterior of the building. I took her to a small alcove where there were no windows.

"Hold on to me." Marsh wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I took a quick look around to make sure no one would see us, and then lifted us up to the rooftops. Marsh grabbed tighter to me the moment her feet left the ground and a small squeal of fear escaped her lips.

"I've got you." I said, setting us down on the rooftop. The top of the building was far less flashy than anywhere else. Steel vents and chimneys littered the roof and a thin layer of gravel covered everything else. The gravel crunched beneath our feet as we lightly made our way towards one of the domes that covered one of the main chambers of the palace. The music below was drowned out by the loud hum of an air conditioner running somewhere. We sat down on a slanted part of the dome.

"So, what's so magic up here? Marsh asked, looking around.

"It's not down there. I think that in itself is enough to recommend it." I replied. Marsh looked around unimpressed, then sighed and leaned against me, her head on my shoulder. My hand swept around her back and we looked at the sky. The air was colder up here, above the trees that surrounded the palace. We could almost see more of the city beyond the treetops, but could definitely see the outline of the wall at the city limit.

We sat there in contented silence for a long time. My arm was starting to fall asleep and my back was starting to buckle a little from being so rigid, supporting her weight on my shoulder. But I wouldn't trade that discomfort for anything in the world. I smiled to myself and breathed in the heady summer air.

"Tekk?" Marsh asked, breaking the silence.

"Hm?"

"Why did you talk to me back then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I'd just chewed you out, and you still came over to talk to me. Why?"

"Well," I mused, "honestly, I saw you sitting there and my feet just started moving. All I wanted to do was tell you how beautiful you looked and how sorry I was that I'd ruined your night."

"Well, that and shrimp." She laughed.

"I'll never live that down…" We laughed. Marsh was silent for a while.

"You didn't ruin everything."

"That's certainly not how you felt back then. God, you were _scary._ "

"I have that effect on people, I've been told."

"It's your eyes. They're so cold when someone first meets you. But that iciness was… refreshing…"

Marsh looked at me, confused.

"My icy cold eyes were refreshing?" She asked.

"Well, yeah." I said, knowing that this wasn't coming out right. "I mean… I don't know. I'd never… _felt_ anything before. Ivan never talked to girls. Ever. No one ever noticed him. But you noticed me, and it was exhilarating, even if you wanted to strangle me."

"I _did_ want to strangle you…" she admitted.

"It's just… I don't think that Tekk officially lived until I saw you and Harry in the garden. Until then, it was just an idea or a concept. But you forced me to act, and when I acted, Tekk became real. At any point before that, I could've admitted that there was a mistake and shown that I was Ivan. But that moment was pivotal. You made Tekk come to life. So, even when you were angry and raving at me, all I could think was that I'd never met a girl who ever made me feel this way."

She looked at me, and I saw that those icy eyes no longer froze me. They were a breath of fresh air to my soul. I knew what had to happen. My heart was pounding in my chest as I slid off the wall and dropped to one knee. In one, very rehearsed motion, I produced the small box I'd been carrying all night. Marsh's eyes went wide and started to glisten as she covered her mouth.

"Marsh…" I asked, trying to get my voice to stop cracking. It felt like there was a potato in my throat. I cleared my throat painfully and tried again.

"Marsh Wolfram, would you-" She embraced me, sobbing. I could feel her nodding vigorously. I blinked back some tears of my own. I could feel her tears falling hot on my neck. She held onto me tightly. After a moment, I started noticing that my knee was really starting to hurt; the gravel was digging harshly into it.

"Can… can I show you the ring yet?" I asked with a small laugh.

Marsh laughed, hiccuped, and sniffed, pulling away and looking at me expectantly. I opened the box. In the velvet setting was a small, rose-gold band with an ornate, glowing, turquoise gem set in the center. She gasped.

"It's so beautiful… That's not topaz, is it?" She asked.

"No. It's something much more rare." I said, as I slipped the ring onto slender finger. I stood up painfully and brushed dirt off of my pants.

"That's a Chaos Emerald." I said.

She looked at the stone in amazement.

"I thought they were bigger than that…" She said. I chuckled.

"They can be. I made this one just for you. Tails and I discovered something very interesting about Chaos Emeralds…" I said as I pulled on a small chain around my neck. On it was another ring, less ornate, with a matching Chaos Emerald set into a tungsten base.

"If you split them, they'll pull themselves back together." I held the chain out and the ring slowly started swinging towards Marsh's finger.

"So no matter where you go, you'll always feel me pulling for you. And no matter how far I roam, I'll always be led back to you."

Marsh looked at her hand, stunned. I could tell that she was feeling the small, constant pull of the ring on her finger. I slipped the chain back around my neck.

"I love you Marsh." I said, simply.

"I love you too, Tekk." She said, tears flowing from her icy blue eyes again.

Marsh sobbed again and held me tight. I could feel the chain pulling on my neck and it felt good to know that it was pulling me towards my future.

We spent another hour on the rooftop, holding each other and talking. Soon, we saw people exiting the ballroom and knew that it was time to go. I lowered us down onto the ground and we walked nonchalantly around the building and into the gardens.

I walked Marsh home, enjoying the warm night air and seeing the lamps illuminating the city streets. Her hand was in mine and she kept seeming to find excuses to bump into my arm. I enjoyed feeling her press into me, so I didn't say anything. We got back to her house and I walked her to her door. She hesitated after opening the door.

"Would you like to come inside?" She asked me, a devilish expression sweeping across her face. I knew that I couldn't say no.


	13. 012 - This Was the Start of the Storm

_012 - This Was the Start of the Storm_

In the weeks following my proposal, my life became more and more stressful. Surprisingly, the least stressful part was the wedding plan itself. It became quickly apparent that, when one has no living relatives and very few friends, the event itself doesn't have to be very big. But the strangest part was how unprepared we were to discover that despite the preparations required for a wedding being a vast list of caterers and florists, there isn't anything you can actually _do_ until a few months before the wedding itself. So while we had a basic plan set up in a week, we had no way of implementing the plan. It was mostly an anxious waiting game.

What was actually stressing me out was live-fire mission training our squad was going through. I was questioning our tactics every day now. Was our goal to ever make a decisive blow to end this war? Evidently, we were to engage our enemies with the intent to incapacitate. Not kill. While I was not particularly bloodthirsty, I couldn't see the strategic advantage of leaving witnesses behind to our activities. At the very least, depriving our enemy of soldiers seemed like a good idea, since live soldiers couldn't be replaced as easily as the Eggmechs we'd been dispatching previously.

Our training consisted of stun grenade and stun gun drills, as well as learning hand to hand combat that emphasized the use of pressure points. And this was the part that was stressing me out the most. Before, when I'd used my power, I just needed to refrain from using too much. It was a matter of degree and very very rarely, aim. I could blast an Eggmech apart if I wanted to. But on live targets, if I wanted to employ my power, I'd need finesse. And that simply wasn't something that I had focused on. In truth, I had no clue how my power could affect living things. I had been carefully testing out the possibility of mind-reading on people I'd pass in the street, but I felt as though I was going about it all wrong. I was trying to engage my extra-sensory ability to see inside their heads, and all that was giving me was an X-ray look into their bodies. It was… disconcerting to say the least.

The truth was, I knew that I could manipulate the brain and the mind if I tried. I don't know how I knew, I just instinctively understood that it was within my ability to do so. But this power frightened me. On the surface, I was frightened that I could potentially cause brain damage to the victim, or worse, unplug their brain. Without understanding what my power could do I was hesitant to experiment on anyone. But on a deeper level, the concept of being able to see through the eyes of another person, peruse their darkest secrets, or even manipulate their thoughts and emotions felt inherently evil to me.

But the tactician in me knew that this could be a powerful weapon to use against my enemy and could be the quickest method to disabling, nonlethally, an opposing army. So, in reality, the stress of the live-fire training came from an internal struggle between pragmatism and morality.

Marsh became indispensable to me during these weeks. We'd grown even closer after the night I'd proposed and every evening we weren't dispatched on missions, we'd either be at my place or hers. There wasn't anything overtly romantic to these rendezvous, just proximity. It was almost as though we were practicing the domestic life we'd be sharing soon. Meal plans started revolving around two people eating in the week, instead of one. And that, too, was a strange addition in my life. The concept of a regular meal.

I had become an infrequent eater and sleeper since I'd gotten my power. I was rarely tired and I was never really hungry. But Marsh had put her foot down that I would have to share at least one meal with her per day. Usually dinner. And while she understood my sleepless nights if I was working or studying, she demanded that I come to bed on any night that I wasn't preoccupied with another task. And so, for the first time in over a year, I had a schedule and some semblance of normality was returning.

And then, our scouts started reporting disturbing happenings in New Megaopolis, the stronghold of the Dark Egg Legion and the Eggman Empire. The Legion seemed to be stepping up their activity in the city. Not just the normal amount of milling about, but they were running drills in the city center. Weapon production was increasing and the coordination among all of the Legionnaires was at an unprecedented level. Discussions began on what we should do to prepare for an upcoming assault.

Before we could decide on any set course of action, it was reasoned, we needed to know what their plans were. And so a mission was drawn up with two objectives. The primary goal was to uncover their upcoming military plans were. The second was to understand their training. The level of coordination was inexplicable. There had to be some external force in play and uncovering that would put us at a huge advantage.

The plan itself was simple. There were to be two squads. Marsh's squad would be the actual mobile unit carrying out the mission. My squad would be there for backup and observation. Officially, it was in a support capacity, but it was well known that we were to observe Marsh's squad in action to better understand live-fire tactics. This was a precursor mission as it were to our upcoming involvement in the war.

Marsh's squad would be entering from an abandoned suburb on the south side of the mega city. There was a main thoroughfare that ran from the dilapidated houses straight into the city center, which meant that there was a lot of cover from which to observe the drills. It also provided easy access to some of the larger buildings as we approached the urban center. Our squad would be following a few hundred yards behind hers, keeping to cover and staying out of any conflict if we could avoid it. We were instructed to leave all confrontation to Marsh's squad and were explicitly ordered to refrain from engaging with the enemy at all costs, even if Marsh's squad was overpowered. When I heard this part in the briefing meeting, my stomach dropped, but Marsh slapped me on my back and told me not to worry. Similar live-fire training missions had been run before and so far the body count was low. It did little to invigorate my spirit, though. The concept of Marsh being attacked by Legion soldiers and all I could do was watch was something straight out of my nightmares.

Marsh suggested, as we left the briefing, that I try learning telepathy, so that I could give her updates on her surroundings to keep her out of trouble. And so, that night, we tried exactly that. Terrified as I was about hurting her with my power, I was even more worried about her walking into a trap that I couldn't warn her about.

"So, I'm going to try and shout a message into your brain. You tell me if you can understand it." I said to Marsh as we sat on my couch back at home.

"Okay." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

I stared intently at her. _Can you hear this?_ I thought as loudly as I could. It felt like I was trying to mentally remove the words from my own mind and shoot them over to her. I repeated the phrase over and over again. Marsh grimaced.

"I'm getting… something… But it's not words. It's like… some sort of intensity. And I can see me, from your point of view." She said, opening her eyes slowly.

"So, you saw what I was seeing?" I asked.

"Yes. But if you were trying to tell me something, I wasn't getting it. Apart from the visual, all the language sounded distorted, like someone wildly twisting the tuning knob on a radio."

"Let's try it again." I suggested. She closed her eyes again. I thought the phrase at her again, trying to feel the meaning of the words themselves, and not just yell the words in my head. After a moment, she opened her eyes again.

"Still nothing. I get the visual. I can see what you're seeing, and I'm getting some sort of emotion. It's like… It's like a kind of interrogation? Like you're expecting a response, but I'm not getting the question."

"I am asking a question." I admitted. "Maybe we're getting better at this."

An hour later, however, Marsh was getting frustrated.

"Still nothing! How are you sending the message again?" She asked.

"I told you, I'm not entirely sure." I replied, feeling a little tired now.

"There's got to be some way for you to send me words."

"Maybe if I try writing them down again?" I suggested.

"No," she replied, visibly frustrated now, "I can't read what you send me visually. I think whatever part of the brain is picking up the message avoids the language centers of the brain. Like, I see the letters, but my brain can't piece them together. It's like I'm reading a different language."

"So, maybe that's it." I said.

"What?"

"Maybe wherever I'm sending the message doesn't get processed by the language centers of your brain. So that's why you're not hearing me clearly or reading anything I write down and then send the visual of. But you can see the visual, right?"

"Yeah."

"What if… What if I used my extrasensory power to show you what I see?"

"Like, show me what you see when you use your remote viewing?"

"Yeah. Well, it's not really remote viewing. I'm seeing it all all of the time, but I just focus on a small part of it."

"That might work."

"Alright," I said, "let's try it out."

I took a deep breath and expanded my view. All in one moment I saw the inside and the outside of my house. I saw the street outside, the houses next door. I saw, as though in my peripheral vision, the inhabitants of those houses, of cars and busses driving by. I saw birds in the trees. I took this view and gave it to Marsh.

I'm not entirely sure what happened next. Marsh suddenly went limp on my couch but her eyelids snapped open revealing nothing but white; her eyes rolled in the back of her head. I panicked and immediately tried to pull the vision out. It came rushing back to me, but not as I'd seen it. I was seeing it the way she saw it.

I was bombarded by a billion things at once. I felt my brain breaking trying to process all of the information it was being told. It was illogical to my brain that I was seeing so much with such limited apparatus to view the world. It was as if I was trying to process the idea that two was the literally the same number as one and three at the same time. It didn't make sense, and I was panicking. No. Marsh was panicking. These weren't my feelings. They were hers. I needed to pull them from her. So I kept pulling.

The feeling of pain and panic subsided, but I was suddenly seeing flashes of Marsh's life as though I were living them. I felt the pain in my chest and the fear as I saw silver metal bodies march through the city. I was very small. I was suddenly in a lot of pain. I was taller now, and had my fists raised as I fought a coyote who was bigger than me. He'd made my friend cry. I wasn't sure why because I was suddenly facing Harry. It was dark outside and he was making advances on me. I felt my confidence in the situation waning as fear and a little panic started humming in the back of my mind. Suddenly a flash of embarrassment and anger as I saw a fox come around the corner and say something. Another moment and I was lying next to that same fox, feeling safe lying next to him in my bedroom. It was a strange feeling to think that nothing in my life had changed but I wasn't as afraid anymore. A fear that I didn't even know I had until he'd taken it away.

Then I was sitting on the couch again, staring at Marsh. I'd seen her memories as she'd seen them. As she'd experienced them. I was breathing heavily and, to my surprise, crying. I'd seen myself as she'd seen me. Marsh's eyes flickered and then rolled forwards. She slumped against me, shaking uncontrollably.

"Wh-wh-what…?" Marsh tried to ask.

"I don't think you can handle the amount of information from the remote viewing, honey." I said in a soothing voice.

"But… But what happened? I thought I saw… But then…" She buried her face into my chest and shook.

I debated on whether or not to tell her what I saw. I decided against it. It was too personal and I couldn't bare to tell her that I'd violated her memories like that, even if it was on accident. I held her on my couch until she fell asleep. I picked her up and carried her upstairs to my room. As I laid her down on my bed, she mumbled, "Let's not try doing that again… okay…?" I kissed her on her forehead and climbed into bed too.

The morning of the mission was grey and cloudy. There was a wind blowing, but it was inconsistent. It felt as though a storm might come blowing through at any moment. Normally, this would be bad news, but for us in Spec-Pro, it would be a godsend if it rained. Eggmech scanners were terrible at distinguishing shapes in the rain, and visibility would be poorer for the Dark Egg Legion as well. The constant movement of raindrops bouncing off walls, roads, and plants would mean that they'd be less likely to notice movement in the distance as we moved from cover to cover.

The suburb we were moving through had seen better days. Much of it was rubble, as though bombs had gone off. My squad moved in two groups on one side of the road, mirroring the movements of Marsh's squad on the other side of the road, about a hundred yards up. We were supposed to be tailing them from further away, but with the poor visibility, we needed to be closer. So we split our squad up to make it less noticeable.

We watched Marsh's squad check the remains of a house. The hopped inside silently. A moment later, a badger popped his head up through a window and gave us a signal. We moved forward into another ruin of a house, following our training. We quickly and quietly swept the corners, preventing an ambush and then found a place with good visibility and cover. For the first hour of moving like this, I'd been using my power to look all around us vigilantly. But it quickly became apparent that no one was out here. So I soon stopped using it, except when we were moving to another house. And now, I wasn't even using it then. I didn't think we'd see a Legionnaire until we got out of the suburbs, and that was another hour or two away. The going was slow, and though it was exciting at first, it quickly became very boring. I kept reminding myself that this kind of caution was what was going to keep us safe. That when we dropped our guard was when the enemy would strike. But I was already numb to that mantra by the time the second hour rolled by.

The cityscape was looming before us by now, getting closer and closer. I quickly did a extrasensory check of the upcoming streets and found nothing moving. Nothing was living out here, just as I'd expected. I walked over the rubble of another house, stepping over the remains of some children's toys. This was bleak. The sky was draining all color from the world, the ground below us was once someone's home, and I was bored beyond all belief. I'd already had my small emotional crisis when a moment of clarity passed over me and I realized I was standing in someone's _home._ When that passed I was left in a kind of a daze. Now I was brooding.

A few raindrops started falling and a low rumble echoed across the sky. The wind had stopped altogether now. I saw Marsh give the signal to her squad. The moved into the next bombed out house silently. Then a signal to us and we moved up. She moved, we got signaled, we moved. It was a routine. Marsh gave the signal to her squad, and she moved into the next house. This one was more intact than its neighbor. Its roof was still covering everything. And, from the side I was standing on, it looked as though it still had all four walls. It was a cute little suburban house, with a small picket fence and a mailbox whose little red flag was standing at attention.

Then, in a loud bang, the house wasn't all there anymore.

I was knocked off my feet and my squad scrabbled to the ground. Time slowed down as I looked at the smokey wreckage of the house. The entire south side of the house had been blown apart. I could see inside, moving shapes. I saw the badger of Marsh's squad grab something body-shaped in the smoke and leap out the hole in the wall. He was followed by a squirrel and a chipmunk, both bloodied. No, I thought, don't let this happen. It wasn't happening. Marsh would follow them out the hole, coughing and bloodied too, but alright. But I knew already that it wasn't going to happen. There were only four people in Marsh's squad. Three standing, one lying on the ground, not moving.

The badger was hunkered over the body as I broke cover. I dimly heard Sarah yelling at me, grabbing at my fatigues, as I rushed down the street. I knew, in a vague out of body kind of way, that what I was doing wasn't just against direct orders, but it was also completely stupid. I'd given away my position. No, worse, I'd given away my squad's position. But I didn't care. I was focusing on that mass of grey fur lying motionless ahead of me, getting nearer and nearer. I saw her squad waving me away. I dropped to my knees at her side. I shook her.

"Marsh? Marsh?! Come on, baby, wake up. You can't do this to me!" I felt hands restrain me, pulling me away from her. I felt the small tug on my neck where my ring was pulling towards her. There was a buzzing in the air that I couldn't identify, but everyone around me was scrambling. I was jostled. I kept staring at her body. Someone was trying to drag me away. There was glints of red steel above me. I heard 'pat pat pat' of bullets hitting the ground near me. She wasn't moving. She wasn't moving. Oh god, she wasn't moving… She was… She was…

The bullet stopped a foot from my face. I was standing up now. My breathing was heavy. I looked up and saw three helicopter Eggdrones, all firing at me. I caught the bullets in front of me and shot them back, lighting fast. Three small explosions and the Eggdrones became scrap metal, peppering the earth. I was vaguely aware of the other soldiers around me, gaping at what they'd just seen. I'd done nothing and the bullets had stopped in front of me, then returned themselves to the robots that had fired them.

There was buzzing in my ears now, but it wasn't the rotors of more robots. It was rage. She was gone. She was taken from me. Just like my parents. My old life. My friends. My home. This war had taken everything from me. This war that no one wanted to finish. This war that a fat fuck sitting in some bunker in the city ahead had decided was worth waging for years. It was his fault this had happened. Doctor Eggman's fault. Eggman's fault. I started walking down the road towards the city. I knew what I had to do now.

I had to kill Doctor Eggman and anyone who got in my way.

Wind was howling at my feet, kicking up dust, rocks, and debris into the air. My fur crackled with unspent energy, my tail twitching. I walked faster. The rocks were orbiting me now, caught in the gravitational well of my fury. I'm not sure at which point I stopped walking and started gliding, but by the time I'd reached the end of the suburbs my feet weren't touching the ground. The air shimmered and distorted around me, my power displacing the space around me. It wasn't long before I saw more robots flying towards me. A dozen this time. I flung my arms wide and all of them went flying into tall buildings on either side of the road.

I could sense where he was. Deep below this city was a series of tunnels and reinforced rooms. I knew where the entrance was, hidden under the city center, and I knew where Eggman would be. I could already feel his panic. I was palpable to me, even through a mile of solid rock and steel.

A squadron of Eggmechs rounded a corner opening fire immediately. The bullets became dust as they hit the air around me. As I sped by them, they fell apart, their parts trailing after me as they got caught in the undertow of my power. More Eggmechs awaited me as I turned a corner. I flung the parts behind me at the small army of robots and they all exploded.

The city was a maze but I navigated it easily. Rockets flew at me and exploded around me as I continued on, one thought on my mind. Kill Eggman. No one else wanted to do it, so it fell to me to be the executioner.

As I got closer to the city center, the Eggmechs had given way to larger robots. These ones were fashioned like gorillas, giant red and silver hands that pummeled the ground like jackhammers. They were easily twice my size. One of them spoke in Eggman's voice.

"You'll go no further-" Was all that it was able to say before I pulled a building down on top of them. I glided through the debris, pulverizing concrete and steel into a fine mist as I moved. Then the dust cleared. I was at the city center. A large plaza before a squat looking courthouse. There used to be a statue of the King in the center, but it had been torn down and a grotesque modern-art representation of Eggman stood in the middle of the plaza now. I stopped.

In the plaza were hundreds of Dark Egg Legionnaires, their black hoods barely obscuring the odd glint of steel here and there. They were all armed. Many of them seemed frightened. But, without anyone saying anything, they all fired on me at once. Rockets flew towards me. Bullets hit my shield. There was a large plume of smoke obscuring my vision as one by one the missiles impacted with my shield or the ground around me. Through the smoke I heard them cheering. I forced the smoke down. The cheering died down immediately. I heard the word "Enerjak" run through the crowd.

"Run or die." I said quietly. They must have heard me, as soon I was left alone in the plaza. Below the stonework of the plaza was the entrance I was looking for. I could feel the mechanism that would drop the ground into a ramp. I shoved it harshly downwards, feeling the machinery bend and snap under my power. Now the only thing stopping me from entering Eggman's base was a door made of a foot of solid steel. It crumpled like tissue paper under my hands. I heard Eggman's voice over the loudspeakers.

"Stay out of here! Er, you'll be facing your death if you do!" I could hear the fear in his voice. I continued on into his bunker. I navigated the corridors of his base, the steel walls streaking by me as I obliterated every obstacle in my path. It wasn't long before I had found his control room. Three security doors had clamped down over the entrance. I peeled them back. I marveled at how good it felt to not constrain my power anymore. I thought of an action, and it happened. I could do whatever I wanted, there was no stopping me. I could do anything, that is, except bring back the dead. I felt the fire in my heart burn hotter.

I entered the control room. It was a large, spherical room with large screens and a steel catwalk leading to the computer banks and control panels. Most of the screens displayed images of the destruction I'd left behind. And in the center of the catwalk, cowering behind a large, ornate chair, was Eggman himself. His name did him justice. He was an egg-shaped man, bald and portly, with a large red nose and a bushy orange mustache. A red leather jacket covered his rotund figure and tight black pants clung to his scrawny legs.

Suddenly, a dozen automated turrets popped out of the walls and opened fire on me. I caught all of the bullets in a sphere around me. I fired a dozen bullets back at the turrets and they fizzled and smoked, dead. I moved towards Eggman. He cowered back, trapped in front of the control panels. I fired bullets all around the spherical room, smashing lights and computer monitors. When I'd stopped, Eggman scrambled to his feet. He was holding onto a remote control. He poised to press it.

"Stop right there, or you'll-" I fired a bullet. It shattered the remote in his hand. He yelped in pain and surprise and dropped the the catwalk again, kneeling before me.

The bullets orbiting my body slowly moved towards him, each one of them pointing at his skull, quivering and twitching with anticipation.

"Doctor Eggman." I said, seething. "You. You took everything away from me."

I put my fingers together like a gun and pointed at him.

"You took my parents." I mimicked firing a gun and a bullet shot off with a loud bang, straight into a wall behind Eggman. He jumped and started shaking visibly.

"You took my childhood from me." I fired again. The bullet whizzed behind me with a loud bang.

"You took my home from me." I fired again. Bang.

"You took my hope." Bang.

"You took my life." Bang.

"You took my love." Bang. I paused. There was one bullet left, quivering between Eggman's eyes. He stared at it, sweating and shaking. I came closer and placed my fingers right behind it. I reveled in the fear on his face.

"Who-who are you?" Eggman asked tremulously.

"I am the one who does what no one else will do." I closed my eyes, soaking in the moment. I would end this war with finality. I would be the hero that everyone needed. The person who would take it upon himself to stop this tyrant and bring peace. I felt my resolve waver. I'd never killed before. I wasn't sure if I could go through with this. So I reached out and tried to sense Marsh's body. I wanted to see her one last time, remind myself what this bastard had taken from me. She'd felt safe with me, and I'd let her down.

I felt out to the suburbs, where I could sense a little less than a dozen people moving around. I found Marsh. She was…

She was sitting up. She was talking to everyone. She was _alive_. She was ALIVE!

I suddenly saw myself. I was holding a bullet to a man's head, ready to kill. I could kill this man and have done with it. Part of me wanted to do it, should do it.

But I knew I couldn't come back to Marsh as a killer. That was a road from which there was no return. I needed to be a hero, but I needed to be _her_ hero. The bullet dropped to the floor. Eggman gasped.

"You listen to me…" I seethed. Eggman seemed confused but was starting to realize that he wouldn't die today. "I watch over them now. I see everything. And I'll see you coming a mile away. " I turned and started to leave. I stopped at the remains of the door.

"I want you to know how easy it was for me to find you. To get to you. You couldn't stop me. You _cannot_ stop me. And I promise you, next time, I will not stop until there is nothing left of you." And I left.

The trail of destruction I'd left in my wake was a powerful reminder of what I could accomplish when I wasn't trying to hold back. This was easy. This was a casual stroll to Eggman. I slowly started realizing just how much potential power I had. I felt a little scared. The destruction made an easy trail to follow. I emerged through the bunker doors to the ramp to see an echidna with red quills and a few cybernetic enhancements on her body.

"So… you're supposed to be Enerjak?" She asked.

"No. Not exactly." I replied. I felt suddenly drained. She looked down the hallway I'd just emerged from.

"Did you kill him?" She asked, sounding bored.

"...No…" I admitted. She seemed disappointed.

"You should have." She said.

"I know."

She straightened herself up. She was clearly Legion, but she wasn't wearing the black robes of the Legion. Instead, she was wearing a black leather jumpsuit that accentuated her curves.

"I'm Lien-Da, by the way. What am I supposed to call you?"

I wanted to say, 'Tekk', but I felt that she wasn't really asking for my name. She was asking for something else. She wanted something from me. She wanted my power.

"You don't call me anything." I said. She didn't change her bored demeanor. "And I'll tell you what I told him. I watch over Mobotropolis now. And I'll destroy anyone who tries to harm them." I took off and flew towards home, leaving Lien-Da behind. Maybe I was wrong about her intentions, but I doubted it.

I wondered what would await me back at home. I knew that my secret was out. Spec-Pro knew my secret, and would use me how they saw fit. I knew that I could be a hero if I needed to be. If that's what they wanted.

 _ **Sorry again for the sparse updating. School and work get in the way, and then just when I had some free time, Zelda: Breath of the Wild happened and I lost all my free time again.**_

 _ **Now we're starting to get into the meat of the story, and the part I'm most excited to write. When I first started out with this story, I'd already written a rough draft up to this point. So, it was just me rewriting a story I'd already started, plugging plot holes and expanding on what I'd already done. Now this is all new territory. I know where the story is going from here, but it's never been put down in text before, so I'm excited to see how it will turn out.**_


	14. 013 - This Was the Calm

_013 - This Was the Calm_

Debriefing was tense and unusually anxiety inducing. Not because my secret was out and I now stood before a tribunal of high ranking officers to explain in detail what had happened and how. Well, not only because of that. But it was also because I knew that one building over, Marsh lay in a hospital bed recovering from her injuries.

I had returned to the scene of the explosion after I had finished with Eggman, only to find that they had all gone. I flew back to the home base and was told by the MP at the door to report to debriefing immediately. Judging by the MP's attitude towards me, he thought I was in some trouble, but he wasn't sure why. My secret wasn't circulating yet. The only reason I knew where Marsh was recuperating was from the pull of my ring and my remote viewing. She was in fine enough health, it would seem, but she was sleeping right now.

The debriefing had been going for about an hour now. I had finished reporting everything that I recalled from the beginning of the mission to my return to the base. They had been taking notes, someone was transcribing everything they could near the back.

"And that is all, Specialist Lanyang?" One of the officers asked. I didn't recognize him. Probably not a good sign that they were calling from brass so high up the chain that I didn't even know them from the annual gala.

"Yes sir." I said briskly.

"Can we corroborate his story?" Another officer asked, doubt in his voice.

"Yes. The first part, anyways, coincides with the debriefing from the others in operating in the mission field." Yet another officer responded, flipping through some notes in a manilla folder.

The lighting of this room was set in such a way that I couldn't easily see the details of the faces of the officers. Even their name tags or rank insignia was hidden from my normal vision. A spotlight was shining down while the officers sat in the dark. This was a far cry from the debriefing I usually had, as me and my squad stood around a table and reported to the officer on duty. This felt more like a tribunal, a hearing before a court-martial would be carried out. I was nervous.

"But what about this second part? He claims to have penetrated Eggman's base! The heart of the Empire and he says that he blew past it like it was nothing." The first officer said again. A third officer spoke this time.

"We have satellite surveillance footage to corroborate it." She opened up a computer display from her desk and started typing. A projector screen glowed to life behind them. They turned to watch.

I saw, in grainy monochrome, a series of still images tracking my devastation of the city, starting with our departure from the convoy, through the buildings, and finally when I burst with power, looking like nothing but a giant, glowing orb from the satellite imagery. The third officer scrubbed through the images until I disappeared into Eggman's bunker, no longer viewable from a satellite.

The satellite imaging had been tracking me. That much was certain. But it also became apparent to me that this wasn't normal. We'd rarely had satellite imagery for recon missions. I knew that our species had very few voyages into the stars or even into orbit. As far as I knew we only had a handful of satellites in orbit at all. To have one tracking me _before_ I started my rampage meant that someone had been keeping an eye on me. And while it was possible that this was standard procedure, to monitor a new live-fire team from orbit, I felt that it was far more likely that it was me specifically that they were watching over. They? No. _She_. Nicole had been tracking me on the satellite imaging array.

It couldn't possibly be just this one mission, either. No, there would be no way for Nicole to know that this mission had any sort of importance over any other. And she didn't feel a sudden spike in Chaos Energy to start recording either. The recording started long before anything went wrong.

I felt betrayed. I was surprised by the hurt I felt in that moment, since Nicole and I were never close friends. At best we were working friends. Colleagues. But she'd been tracking me this whole time. Watching my every movement. And while I knew, rationally, that she was doing her job and making sure that I wasn't a threat (and I was, technically, a threat, regardless of my loyalty), it still hurt for her to have told me that she trusted me to do the right thing, and then watch me carefully, disregarding that trust.

"Incredible…" The second officer whispered to himself.

They turned to face me again, the projector turning powering off. The room felt darker than it had before.

"I'll be honest, I don't know what to make of this…" Said the first officer. "You aren't guilty of any breach of conduct, as far as we can tell."

"He _did_ disobey orders." Said Second.

"But given the circumstances, the punishment should be light," Said Third, "This was his first live-fire mission and someone he has close personal ties to had been seriously injured."

"That's not an excuse in the military!" Said Second, getting huffy.

"I side with Adams," Said First, "While he did disobey orders, there were extenuating circumstances that call for a more lenient punishment. And given his service record to this point has been spotless, even glowing with praise from his commanding officer, I see no reason to deliver the full punishment."

I hadn't even realized that my rushing to help Marsh had been breaking orders. This hadn't crossed my mind until this discussion was taking place. My stomach did a flip as it fell in fear as I realized I'd disobeyed an order, and at the same moment discovered that I wouldn't be punished harshly for it.

"That said, this business with this… Ability? Power?" The First was not sure what to call it.

"Power." I said.

"'Power' it is. This business with this power needs to be discussed. This is an important issue that can completely change the outcome of this war if used correctly. As it stands, the other soldiers operating in this mission have been ordered not to breathe a word of what happened today to anyone. That order stands for you as well, Specialist Lanyang. You are forbidden to tell anyone about this power you have, until the military council has decided on a prudent course of action."

"There are some who know of it already." I said, meekly.

"Who have you told?" Third asked, a little fear in her voice.

"Agent Marsh Wolfram, my fiancee. Tails, er, _Miles_ Prower. And the computer entity Nicole."

"So no one who hasn't already proven their ability to keep a secret to the Freedom Fighters?"

"No, ma'am." I said.

"As it stands, you are not permitted to discuss your power with anyone beyond those three who knew before today. Even still, you're ordered to keep your silence about what happened today. Those actions are strictly confidential. Violation of this order will be seen as an act of espionage and treason. The punishment of which is life incarceration with no chance of parole. Do I make myself clear?" Third had a steel in her voice. The other two officers stared at me in solidarity.

"Crystal clear, ma'am." I said.

"You are to be put on suspension with half pay until further notice. You are dismissed, Specialist Lanyang."

I turned heel and exited the room. My heart was beating in my chest and I wasn't sure why I was so afraid. Was it because the secret was out? Or was it because I'd been reprimanded for doing what needed to be done?

I was trying to figure out how a half-pay suspension figured into this. Disobeying a direct order had a wide variety of punishments depending on the situation. Everything from a week on mess duty (a slap on the wrist) to a full-blown court martial. Nowhere in that spectrum, however, did a suspension with half-pay come in. Suspension with pay meant that they needed me out of the way for a little while. Suspension without pay meant a real punishment, denying me a paycheck altogether. As far as I knew, half-pay only happened for retirees, and even then, only after a certain threshold was passed in time and rank.

I crossed the courtyard towards the medical pavilion. It was night time now. The sky was black and starless, but the lights illuminating the courtyard bathed the buildings and lawn with an electric orange. The air had an unpleasant chill to it that meant that the storm from earlier hadn't passed yet. I continued to ponder what the half-pay suspension could mean. But it was obvious. They had said it themselves. They didn't know what to do with me. There were risk-assessments to be done. Orders to be drawn up. They were likely debating the very same thing that I had debated since I first discovered these abilities: should I go and kill Eggman once and for all? But they needed me out of the way until they decided. I couldn't be allowed to run missions anymore, because my (literally) violent outburst made me a liability. But they didn't want to get rid of me altogether because I might be useful.

The medical pavilion, in reality, a separate building near the Spec-Pro offices was quiet. The hissing of respirators and soft beeping of machinery drifted into the sterile hallways. Some soft sounds of television played in the distance as well. The reassuring sounds of life beyond these dead hallways. I walked towards reception and a bored looking skunk looked up from a textbook.

"I'm looking for Wolfram, Marsh?"

"Visiting hours are over." She said, sounding bored but also apologetic.

"I'm her fiancee. I'm pretty sure there's like, a family clause or something?"

"Well, it doesn't technically count for _future_ family members," she said, pulling up a file on her computer, "But, I do see a Tekk Lanyang listed as an emergency contact for her." She eyed the name on my uniform. "That's probably you, right?"

"Yes."

"She's in the recovery ward on the third floor. Ask the nurse at reception there for the room number."

I thanked the nurse and headed towards the elevator. I sensed around and could feel her laying on a hospital bed above me. I skipped the reception desk on the third floor and went straight to her room. The door was open.

Marsh lay in a hospital gown on an inclined bed, watching TV quietly. The tip of her tail was wagging back and forth testily; a habit she had for when she was anxious and bored. I knocked on the door quietly and she looked over at me.

"You came!" She said, smiling.

"Of course." I said, walking in and kissing her lightly. "I'm sorry, I would've come sooner, but the debriefing ran long." I sat down on a chair as she turned off the TV.

"I could imagine. So, what's the deal?" She asked.

"Can't talk about it. Same as you. But I am being put on suspension with half-pay."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I think they don't know what to do with me yet, so they're gently putting me aside until they get their ducks all in a row."

Marsh reached out a hand to me. I grabbed it and held it. It felt reassuring to have someone's hand to hold.

"I know how much being a Freedom Fighter means to you. This has to be hard." She said.

"You're the one in the hospital bed. I'm supposed to be consoling you." I said, smiling sheepishly.

"We're about to be married. We console each other." She squeezed my hand. "But don't worry. I'm sure they'll find somewhere to put you to use. Who knows? This could be the break you need to be a front-line hero. Though this probably means your place in Spec-Pro is going to shift."

"Probably." I said. "So, how are you holding up? Has the doctor said when you can come home? What happened?"

"Oh, well. About that…"

"What?" I said, feeling the first stirrings of alarm. Marsh saw this and waved her hand dismissively in front of her face. She was smiling a little.

"So I got brought in here with moderate trauma to my head and back. Turns out that the house we snuck in was a weapons cache for some Dark Egg Legion turncoat. Someone was stockpiling explosives and weapons in case their alliance didn't pan out, I guess. We accidentally tripped a booby trap climbing in. It was just supposed to be a flashbang, but they had been expanding their stockpile, it would seem, after they'd already booby trapped it. So there were more explosives and weapons piled up near the trap. The flashbang ignited one of the explosive caches and the whole place went up. The moment I felt the tug of the tripwire on my foot, I threw myself behind a wall. I don't remember much after that, but I think the wall took the brunt of the explosion."

"I didn't see what happened with you, though when I came back around, I could see the trail you'd left behind. No one else knew what to make of it, though, like you said, I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"They're not listening in here. Not unless you count Nicole, but I don't think she's going to tattle." Though the extent to which I could trust Nicole was now very much in question.

Marsh hesitated. "...They're… They're afraid of you. They weren't sure what happened. It looked like when Sonic would go Super Sonic, but he was always in control. You weren't. They said you looked like a demon unleashed from hell…"

"We got evac'd from our position after it was clear you were heading into the city and not planning on coming back. I was brought in here to the ER, but after a quick checkup and some bloodwork, I was told I was okay. Minor concussion, maybe a sore back for a few days. They're keeping me overnight just to make sure it's not something more serious, but they're not worried." Marsh was suppressing a grin.

"What?" I asked, looking at her trying not to smile.

"Well, let's just say you're going to have company for your suspension…" She said slyly.

"I thought you said you were fine. Just a concussion. Aren't you going back out into action?"

"The doctor says I can't. He told me I needed to be more careful, especially now…" She was smiling ear to ear now.

"What?"

"When he got the blood work back… Tekk. _I'm pregnant._ "

I stared into her icy blue eyes and slowly a smile crept over my face. Pregnant. I was going to be a father. It slowly sunk in and time seemed to stand still, holding her hand in a hospital, staring into her eyes. I had thought that I couldn't have loved her any more deeply than the night that I'd proposed. I couldn't have been more wrong.


	15. 014 - This Was the Storm

_014 - This Was the Storm_

The following weeks are ones that I've played over in my head more than any other time of my life. Not just because they were the happiest days. The days where my future seemed so bright and full of hope. But also because they're filled with regret. This was a very important time where my future drifted away from me because of my inattention.

Marsh and I threw out our original wedding plans the day she came home from medical. With a baby on the way, we'd decided that getting married right away was the thing to do. We discussed it at length, and we'd come to the realization that there was really no one to invite to our wedding. Marsh's family was gone, as was mine. And the only people I knew outside of Marsh was my squad, which at the current time were all afraid of me. Marsh was the first to suggest going to city hall and simply filing a marriage license. And while I resisted the idea, I eventually caved, since it was what I had wanted for a long time. We signed the paper, paid the fee, and walked out of the building as husband and wife. This also more or less legitimized the pregnancy, since she was very early on and no one else knew. At least, no one who was at liberty to discuss it. Marsh and I agreed that we'd tell everyone that the child was conceived in wedlock, with a sly wink to one another. No one would believe us, considering our elopement, but no one would say anything either. At least not to us.

Being newlywed was what kept me distracted. At first, it was strange. I kept the ring around my neck since I was paranoid of losing it if it were on my finger. The chain that held it felt more comfortable to me. I endured some harsh words from Marsh for my decision, but nothing more. There was the bliss of now being Marsh Lanyang that was keeping _her_ distracted, but I'm sure if our marriage had lasted longer and I'd still persisted in not wearing the ring on my finger, the fight would've become more heated.

But the strangeness had little to do with the ring. The real strange part was how much it felt like playing 'house'. You know, the children's game where you'd play act the typical roles in a domestic setting? For the first few days it felt like we were trying very hard to live up to both of our expectations of what domesticity would be, based on our vague recollections of our parents and what we'd seen in the media. Eventually, after some discussion and frustration, we settled into more natural roles, though there were issues that I had to cave in to.

First was that I had to start sleeping every night. I hadn't realized how much I'd gotten used to staying up for days at a time, until I had my better half going to bed every night and expecting that I'd follow. Eating was another thing I had to start doing every day. At least one meal a day with Marsh was the expectation, she'd said. So I started setting an alarm on my watch to remind me of my obligations to go through the motions of biology.

There were recompenses, of course. The most principle being Marsh herself. It would be indecorous of me to say much on the subject of our intimacy, so I won't tell you more than we loved each other very much. With that intimacy, however, came a deeper feeling of love that was almost terrifying in how completely it dominated me. How helpless I'd suddenly felt if Marsh wasn't there. With all my power and ability, I still needed Marsh, if only to support me.

And she did support me. Because despite all of these distractions, I worried about the length of my suspension. After the first two weeks, I started growing anxious. Marsh did her best to reassure me that everything would turn out alright, but in those two weeks, no word had been uttered on what my capacity in the Freedom Fighters would be. Even worse, my correspondence with my squad had become silent too. Not that there was much of that to begin with. But no one had even so much as asked what had happened to me. This worried me. Had I scared them that badly with my outburst?

Now, I have done a deep investigation of those weeks after the fact. I can tell you that this is what was happening while I was being distracted with Marsh:

The high officials overseeing the Freedom Fighters were having a fervent back and forth about my capacity as a soldier or a weapon. Many were in favor of using me to protect the city from further attack and nothing more. Others argued that this job was already being done adequately by Nicole and the main Freedom Fighters, and thus I was a dangerous redundancy.

Just as many were arguing to send me in as a final solution to the Eggman conflict and strike a decisive victory once and for all. Then there was a discussion about how they'd go about doing such a thing, since no one could actually give the order to kill within the Freedom Fighters. Some discussion was made, behind closed doors, about how to manipulate me to do it of my own volition. After all, it was said, hadn't I already come close to doing just that? All they'd have to do was to arrange another situation where I would target Eggman and my rage would do the rest. This plan, eventually, was scrapped, as there was fear that I would find out who had manipulated me and turn my power against them in retribution.

I should point out that the officials making that particular plan were a very small selection of the people discussion what should be done with me. And even then, they hid their scheming from the others. But there was open discussion about using me in an offensive war against Eggman, though from the transcripts I'd read, no one wanted to admit that such an action would inevitably end in blood shed.

This debate went back and forth for several weeks. It was eventually decided that I'd act in a defensive position, but they couldn't figure out in what capacity. That's where the decision hung when something terrible happened.

You may recall me saying something about Darx, the black squirrel from my squad, and an echidna girl who looked as though she may have been with the Dark Legion. It would later be discovered that he was actually dating her at the time. I talked with Darx years after this event and he admitted to me what had happened, begging my forgiveness with every other word. (I did forgive him, eventually, though it was very hard.)

Sometime early in his career as a Freedom Fighter, he'd discovered a Dark Legion spy in New Mobotropolis. He'd fallen in love with her, and, if their three children they'd later have together was any indication, she'd fallen in love with him too. They'd spent a lot of time together in secret, occasionally confiding in one another the kinds of secrets that shouldn't have been told. For Darx's part, he never let on that he knew anything about the Dark Legion. But unlucky for her, the Dark Legion's cybernetic enhancements came at the cost of her privacy, a fact she'd only learn much later.

So, one night after my rampage, he told her what he'd seen. Unbeknownst to her, the Dark Egg Legion was watching and listening. Darx told her about how terrifying I'd been and how he wasn't sure if he felt safe with me around. The Legion ran with this information and created a plan to sow anarchy and mistrust in the Freedom Fighters, and more importantly, deliver a crippling blow to me. They gathered up as much footage as they could scrounge up from my rampage through their forces and even footage of my standoff with Eggman himself. They edited it together and leaked it to the New Mobotropolis' news networks who ran with it from there. That was how my secret was released to everyone all at once.

I was sitting at home with Marsh when Nicole suddenly materialized in our front room, an expression of panic evident on her face.

"Tekk, I'm so sorry. I swear it's not my fault!" She said.

"What?" I asked, standing up, feeling fear wash over me. "What's not your fault?"

Nicole switched on the TV which was airing a breaking news segment. I can't recall what the news anchor said. I was in absolute shock as I watched a video of me holding a bullet to Eggman's head. At the bottom of the screen was a subtitle, "A Killer Among Us?"

My mind raced. How did anyone get footage from this angle? This hadn't been introduced during my debriefing. This couldn't have been collected from Spec Pro… Could it?

"Nicole…" I started.

"I don't know where it came from. All I know is that all the news stations are running it."

"Can't you do something about this?" Marsh asked, rising to stand next to me.

"I can't." Nicole sounded pained. "My programming prohibits me from violating a free press. I could've prevented the video from ever reaching them _if I'd known where it'd come from_."

"This… this isn't your footage?" I asked. Nicole looked down, ashamed.

"You knew I was watching you via the satellite. And I'm sorry about that, but I have to watch out for the city. It's my entire reason for existing. I had to turn that over when you went berserk, but I swear to you that _this_ isn't my footage. They have satellite footage of you in the city streets too, but they're not from my satellite either."

"Does it matter?" Marsh asked. Nicole and I both stared at her.

"Does it," Marsh said, looking at us both, "even matter where the footage came from? Well, obviously, in the _long run_ it matters, but I mean right now? How are the people handling this, Nicole? What's going to happen to Tekk?"

"That's why I came here," Nicole said, "They're not handling it very well. A lot of people are terrified. There were a lot of rumors going around since you'd been put on suspension, Tekk, but those were just rumors. Seeing this confirms a lot of them and people are starting to believe the worst things about you. There's a sizeable portion of the population who wants you gone. I came here to warn you that you need to leave."

"I need to leave?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes!" Nicole said, sounding almost frantic. "There were orders for your arrest drawn up almost immediately after the footage went live and even before those were finalized, there were police and military rounding up a posse to come and take you. They'll be here any moment."

Almost as if on cue we could suddenly hear the angry voices of a large group of people coming from outside. My stomach sank like a rock. My heart was racing. I was terrified. While most of my fear was for Marsh's safety, part of it was from the culmination of my worst fears. This was what I was dreading. This was why I tried keeping these powers under cover.

I swallowed hard and walked towards the door. The voices were loud on the other side of the door. Marsh was hot on my tail, holding on to me, her nails digging into my arm in her fright. I opened the door and went out to face the mob.

There was angry shouting and screaming. All down the street and surrounding my house were a sea of animals of every kind, all screaming their fear and rage at me. Some were armed with makeshift weapons. Baseball bats, hockey sticks, even a tennis racket or two. Some had more serious armaments. Pickaxes, shovels, model swords. I even saw a few torches in the crowd, which surprised me. I'd never actually seen a torch before. But evidently arson was on some of their minds.

Once I'd stepped outside, however, a quiet started to spread. A terrible hush that was so filled with fear it made even _my_ knees shake a little. For a moment, I thought I might be able to take control of the situation. The ones nearest to the front had shuffled away from me, despite a fifty foot space between us. In the faces, I could see people I recognized from Spec Pro. Sarah was there, a monkey wrench in her hand. So was Kline. He had a rock. Somehow, seeing them in the crowd hurt me more than anything else. I tried to compose myself, to say something to get them to leave me in peace. But before I could say or do anything, there was the sound of, "Freak!" from deep in the crowd, and the silence broke. I saw Kline hurl the rock. I quickly blocked it, and it bounced off into the crowd.

The mob swarmed again, all screaming and rushing forward. More rocks were flying at me, and I kept deflecting them, bouncing them back left and right. Nicole had disappeared. Chaos ensued all around me. I saw someone try and hurl their shovel like a javelin at me. It fell short and landed into the crowd where a howl of pain went up. Someone with a torch had pushed their way to the front and was trying to set my house afire. The nanites that composed the structure were fire resistant, so I wasn't worried. A blow hit my on the side of my head from a cane. It wasn't much, but it knocked my head to the side. Suddenly, I realized that among all of the people clamoring for me, I couldn't feel Marsh on my arm anymore.

Panic set in now. I whipped my head back and forth as I tried to fight off the hands that groped at me and the weapons that were brandished in my direction. Where was Marsh? I heard her scream my name a few yards away. How had she gotten swept so far away? I looked in the direction of her voice and saw her head bobbing in the crowd. She was getting pushed and shoved. I started moving towards her, trying to push my way through the masses, but it was no use. Everyone was shoving at me. I was watching Marsh get further and further away, and then suddenly I couldn't see her anymore. She'd gone down below the crowd. I felt for her, searched for her, and I could see her, on the ground, feet coming down on her hand, now her leg. Someone tripped on her and planted a knee into her neck. She was starting to cry and curl up, her arms covering her stomach. _The baby._

I didn't think. I acted. I created a force field around her and pushed it outward, pushing the mob around her away. People screamed as the large turquoise bubble suddenly blossomed in the crowd. I was angry now. I started to levitate and push people out of the way as I approached Marsh.

"You will all return to your homes now." I said, amplifying my voice over the crowd. Many weren't listening. I heard cries of, "This is it!" and, "He'll kill us!" Some even screamed, "What is he going to do to that woman!" and "Leave her alone you monster!" I approached Marsh and the crowd seemed to start to disperse. "Leave now." I said loudly. I got to Marsh, passing easily through the force field. I lowered it as I held her in my arms. She was crying.

"It's okay," I told her softly, "It's going to be okay."

I then heard a small voice in the crowd. "Out of the way! Out of the way!" I recognized Tails' voice. I looked up and saw the crowd part front of me. Just as I saw Tails, several things happened at once.

Sarah had made it towards the front of the crowd and had come up on me while I was focusing on Marsh, pure rage on her skunk face. She swung her wrench down at my head. My eyes flashed turquoise as I used my power to catch it inches from my head. I swung my head around to see her holding it, surprise on her face. I pushed the wrench back towards her just as what I'd seen finally registered in my head. When I'd seen Tails, he was carrying the portable Chaos Siphon. The crowd had parted and he was aiming it at me. I heard a whirring noise as the siphon kicked into life. I swung my head back around to see a bolt of lightning jump from my body to the siphon.

The pull was stronger than anything we'd done before. Tails kept the siphon on me and I felt my power ebb away quickly, draining me of everything. I looked down at Marsh who was looking up at me, fear in her face. The fatigue spreading across my body turned into pain. I grunted. I moaned. Then, finally, I screamed. I felt my power reaching its end. Then I suddenly felt a second wind. A large pulse of turquoise energy erupted from somewhere inside me. I saw the lightning bolt arc wildly as it continued to suck power from me. The crowd moved further away. I tried to take a step towards Tails. My mind wasn't working very well. I couldn't focus, but I knew that I desperately needed to talk to him. Tell him to stop. But words weren't coming. Just as quickly as the second wind came, it left, drained away by the Chaos Siphon. Tails kept pulling my power away. I took another step, then fell to my knees. I was exhausted all over again. Then another wave hit me and I stood up. The pulse from my body was a little more violent this time. People nearest to me were knocked over. I thought I heard people screaming. "What is he doing?" "Turn it off!" "What is that thing?" My body felt strange. Another exhaustion, another wave of energy, another pulse, larger than before. I felt like I was losing control of something. My limbs felt like they weren't attached to my body anymore. Another cycle. Tails looked terrified, as though he couldn't stop even if he'd wanted to. The pulse came again. I felt like I was going to be blown away by these pulses if it didn't stop. I tried to look back at Marsh, but as I turned my head another pulse came. Then there was a rushing sound. The breath was knocked out of me and all I could see was black.

 _ **Sorry again for the long delay. Between finals, my job, and my wife and I moving, I had very little time to write. And the little time I did have to write was eaten up by a triple threat game release of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Persona 5, and Yooka-Laylee, all of which demanded my attention.**_

 _ **In addition, I had a lot of planning to do for this chapter, surprisingly enough. This was**_ _ **the**_ _ **chapter that I would always write to and then never figure out how to get it to work. I always had this mob encounter planned, although it came from a much much earlier draft where I more or less figured I could please myself. Originally, (and this was like, when I was 16) there was this sub-plot where Tekk found Majora's Mask and accidentally put it on. He started pulling down the moon, kicked everyone's ass, and then somehow was able to take off the mask and then while he was pushing the moon back... well, you'll see next chapter what happens.**_

 _ **Eventually, as I sat down to start writing the first draft of this a long time ago, I decided that A) Majora's Mask has no business being in a Sonic universe and B) it established a bad precedent for the theme of this story. Tekk isn't a monster if he's literally possessed by a monster where he has no control, right? So I had to change that.**_

 _ **Now, if you'll excuse me, I have actual research to do for the next chapter, which hopefully will come much sooner than this one did.**_


	16. 015 - This Was My Journey Back

_015 - This Was My Journey Back_

It took longer than it should've for me to understand what had happened. Blackness surrounded my and my lungs refused to suck in air. Almost immediately my body began to ache and swell. My eyes felt like they were on fire. My nose, throat and mouth as well. It was unbelievable agony. Slowly, the blackness came into focus, punctuated with a billion points of light. I was weightless. Slowly I rotated to see a large, blue-green orb in front of me. I was cast out into space, free floating without protection far away from Mobius.

The sight in front of me made me want to never blink. The moisture boiling away from my eyes made me want to keep my eyes closed forever. I couldn't swallow. It took a while before the panic of weightlessness and pain went away. In truth, it never went away, it just became the background of my existence. Though, once I understood my situation I found it harder and harder to remain lucid. I was exhausted in a way that I'd never felt before. I closed my eyes and though I fought it, I fell asleep.

I awoke much later. I knew it was much later because the planet in front of me, with its one moon drifting behind it right then was much larger than it had been before. I closed my eyes against the pain again. I tried to do something, _anything_ , with my power to make the situation better, but I still felt drained. At least I wasn't exhausted before. My lungs hurt, but that was because they had collapsed. The entire lack of air pressure around me had forced them to empty in a way they'd never done before. As for the rest of my body, well, my hands were puffy in front of my face, nearly twice their normal size. I couldn't tell by looking, but I felt how tight my clothing felt and knew the rest of my body was swollen as well. While my circulatory system was still under pressure, being a closed environment controlled by my heart's frantic beating, the gasses in the blood, especially near the surface, were expanding, causing my body to swell.

I was surprised by the lack of cold. Or, rather, it was cold, but my body was keeping up with the cold. My jacket I normally wore and my jeans were doing an ample job of retaining my radiated body heat. It turned out that a vacuum doesn't conduct heat very well, and so I was only losing heat from radiation, not from convection.

Speaking of radiation, I was being exposed to a fuck-ton of it. Without any protection, UV rays were bombarding my body. While I couldn't do much at the moment with my power, I could feel in my body that the Chaos Energy that kept me alive was continuously fighting to keep myself alive. My DNA was being ripped apart and that energy was frantically repairing the broken sequences.

I tried to focus my energy to do something useful. It was hard, but I was able to break down some of the fur I was shedding. By concentrating hard, I was able to break apart the covalent bonds between the atoms that made up the proteins. I broke them down as far as I could and then kept them around me. I did as much as I could at first, but quickly became exhausted, falling asleep before even realizing it.

When I awoke, I panicked, worried that I'd lost the atoms I'd broken apart. But, it turned out that they were still moving at the velocity I'd left them at. Some might have been scattered out, but most were still there. This was important. Over the next few weeks I slowly broke down my furry undercoat into atoms. It was mostly hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms. It was very slow at first, only breaking apart a few strands of fur on the first "day" (I hesitate to call them days, since I'm not sure how much time was really elapsing.) but after a few of these "days" I had started getting adept at the molecular modification. Soon I was breaking down the hair fiber as fast as I could focus on the molecular construction. With enough time and molecules, I was able to form a crude atmosphere around me. This didn't fill my lungs or even do much to stop my body from swelling painfully, but it did at least stop my eyes from boiling instantly.

Once I could keep my eyes open, I could better consider my situation.

I was drifting towards Mobius slowly. After my first sleep, I'd assumed I had been caught in Mobius' gravitational well, but I was wrong. Or, rather, I wasn't entirely right. Once I could focus on something other than breaking down hair to create some sort of pressure around me, I noticed a persistent tugging around my chest. The engagement ring I'd made had been pulling me slowly towards the planet, guiding me back home. I knew that the force by which it was moving me wasn't exactly speedy, but it was consistent. And since I wasn't dealing with any sort of friction out there in the black void, I was slowly accelerating. Soon, I figured, I'd be caught in the gravitational well, and things would go much faster.

The moment I considered that, however, I discovered that I was going to run into an issue of reentry eventually. I'd discovered that my power was still too weak to push myself towards the planet. As long as I took on the mental processes myself, coaxing atoms around me was fairly simple, but moving my entire mass was still too hard. I thought briefly of absorbing the Chaos Energy from the ring I'd made, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. First was that there wasn't all that much energy being stored in that stone. Just enough for the Chaos Forces to pull on the gem stone itself. The second reason was that I knew that Marsh was on the other end of this stone. If I were to pull out the energy, she'd see the energy die on her end. She might take it as a sign that I was still alive, trying to get back to her. But more than likely, she'd take it as an omen that I had finally gone. Lastly, I didn't want to break the only connection I had left with her.

I remember Tails having mentioned something about faster than light communication with the Chaos Emeralds. I would've given anything to figure out how to communicate through the stone to my wife. But the power was beyond me. I thought about adding power to my stone, to make it glow in morse code. But tampering with the only thing guiding me home seemed too dangerous a prospect.

So I drifted. I'd sleep, wake up, break down more of whatever my body was shedding, and go back to sleep. It was silent. It was pain. While the views were gorgeous, you can only be awed by space for so long until it become mundane. I didn't have enough atmosphere to stop the pain. I didn't have enough power to speed things along. All I _did_ have was time. Ample time to reflect on how I'd gotten to where I was.

I still couldn't figure out why I'd suddenly teleported miles away from where I was. I didn't even know that I _could_ teleport, though in retrospect I realized that it should've been one of the first things I should've tried. There were all sorts of stories about Sonic, and even his rival, Shadow, teleporting using Chaos Emeralds. As far as I could tell, my body reacted reflexively. A kind of last-ditch hail-mary effort to survive. I even speculated that Chaos Energy ran on a more fundamental part of the universe. It wasn't going to move me relative to the movement of the planet I was on, but move me, with no acceleration or inertia whatsoever (I'd have been drifting away from the planet then), relative to the center of the universe. Since Mobius was traveling hundreds of miles per hour around our sun, and that sun was orbiting another large mass further out (and so on and so forth), what was a technically short hop was a huge leap when compared to the relative position of the planet I'd been standing on.

This was one of the subjects that crossed my mind as I drifted through the void. I'd been drifting for so long that I could now break the atoms apart without much thought. It was almost reflexive now. I'd even started changing the atomic structure to make different atoms. I knew I was going to need some sort of shielding when I started entering the atmosphere, especially if I was still too weak that I couldn't fly when it happened. If I could fly, maybe I could slow my descent enough to not burst into flames. I'm sure I'd survive, but I couldn't guarantee myself that it wouldn't be a terribly painful experience. And crash landing onto the planet burned, bald and stark naked wasn't how I wanted to come home.

Home… That was what filled my mind most days. The concept of seeing Marsh again was the only thing that kept me going through that slow journey. I imagined my arrival at our doorstep, walking in to see her sitting at the kitchen table. She'd be swollen and large, due to give birth any day. Or maybe she'd already have given birth. How long had I been out here? She'd probably cry when she saw me. I probably would too, come to think of it. Or maybe she wouldn't even be home. Maybe she'd be out and she'd come home to see the lights on from outside. She'd be so worried until she opened the door to see me. Would she be holding our son? Or would it be a daughter? Would she name the child after me? Did she think I was dead? Her ring was constantly pulling her upwards, it would seem like to her. Maybe she thought it was pulling her towards heaven?

I thought about a lot of things. I missed people. I'd always been self-sufficient and reclusive, even before Ivan died. But this was different. It was silent out there. I couldn't even hear my own breath. All I could hear was the maddening thump-thump-thump of my own heart beating. And while it was reassuring that it was still going, it was the only thing that filled my ears. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year… Had I been up there for a year? It felt like I had. I hadn't been very observant about watching how the planet tilted and spun before me. I'd been so caught up in creating an atmosphere and sleeping that I hadn't considered watching the planet to figure out time.

The time passing affected my moods. Some days I'd be optimistic. I'd be chugging along ripping my sheddings apart and thinking about how miraculous it was that the ring I'd given Marsh was guiding me back to my future. My home. Other days, I'd be furious. Seething at the people I'd tried to protect who'd turned on me. Sarah was in that crowd. So was Kline. I'd trusted them. Fought alongside them. I'd saved their lives countless times with that power that they thought made me a monster. Who was the real monster? The person with power, or the person who tries to kill someone who had saved their lives. I guessed that Sarah's betrayal made sense. She'd never liked me and she was always aggressive. But Kline? He was always so friendly with me.

I was angry at Nicole and Tails, too. No doubt they'd been planning this from the get-go. A Chaos Siphon? That had to have been Nicole's idea. Or, at least, her prompting. Why else would Tails have had the idea. I should've seen this coming, I would think, I watched it become more and more portable. More and more efficient. I was instrumental in designing the only weapon that could stop me. There was an irony in that.

I was angry at people that had nothing to do with where I was. My hatred bounced from person to person, but the one person it seemed to keep coming back to was Sonic the Hedgehog. I knew it was irrational; I'd never even met the guy. But somehow, that only made it worse. He was the only person I'd ever wanted to meet. He was my hero. Throughout all of what I'd gone through, I was angry that I'd never so much as seen him. Where was he when the crowds started? Why hadn't I seen him anywhere in the city? For a hero, he sure let a lot of other people do his work for him.

And this whole, will they won't they with the Princess… Princess Sally Acorn and Sonic the Hedgehog had been _the_ couple in all of Mobius for longer than I could remember. They'd get close, fight, fall apart, then fall in love again only to repeat the cycle. Last I'd heard, the Princess had tried to get Sonic to stay with her, and he flat out, and publically, refused her. Why was I following the leadership of people who couldn't even just figure out their own damn business? All of it was so infuriating that I wanted to scream. And I would have. If I'd had air in my lungs to scream with.

Most of the time, however, I was depressed. The repetition of every day was killing me. Life was so boring that my awake time started to blur with my time asleep. I wasn't even dreaming anymore. I'm pretty sure that I was going through the motions of breaking down my fur even while asleep now. And I eventually stopped waking up altogether. I don't know how long I was in this trance for. It was a long time, though. When I woke up, my body wasn't aching as much anymore. My lungs were filling with air, though not one that could sustain life, I was sure. I'd formed a small atmosphere around my entire body, made up of trash elements I'd ripped out of my shed fur, hair, and nails.

The planet was all I could see now. I had to look behind me to see space. I was able to see cities far below me. I tried pushing myself a little and found that I could. My power felt as though it were back. I pushed myself again. There was no sense in constantly pushing myself, I'd just keep accumulating speed until I hit the atmosphere. I didn't want to exhaust myself any more than I'd need to, since I might have to start _fighting_ gravity soon.

I felt more optimistic than I had in a long time. Far below me I could see the sprawling expanse of New Mobotropolis. It looked like a bunch of small tan dots connected by a spider web of fine threads. Soon, I thought, grabbing the ring under my jacket. Soon I will be home. The ring was pulling me to Marsh. To my future. To my family.

It was a very gradual process, even then. I didn't notice exactly when gravity took over my acceleration. It was such a slight change at first, but soon I could feel myself pulled all over, not just from the ring. The change in temperature was also slow at first, but quickly I grew cold. Freezing cold. The gases surrounding me had been acting as a thermos for awhile, capturing my radiated body heat and reflecting it back at me. But as I entered the atmosphere, they transferred the body heat into the air, leaving me to make up the difference. Now I had a decision to make: either let myself fall fast enough that friction warmed me up, at the risk of catching fire. Or slow myself so I wouldn't catch fire, but deal with freezing in the stratosphere until I descended far enough. My eyes were freezing, literally, when I figured that my best bet was to head into the atmosphere as quickly as I could and hope I could descent into the warmer air before too long.

It still took too long. I was freezing and numb by the time I could feel the air warm around me. Below me was the city I'd left so long ago. I thought about landing far from the city and approaching it on foot. But my impatience to see Marsh took over and I flew straight to the city center. I'd never flown around New Mobotropolis before, and I wasn't entirely sure if I could find my house by flying.

People had stopped to gawk and stare as I touched down in a central park in front of the Royal Palace. It only took a moment for people to understand who I was. Then most of them dispersed.

Nicole appeared beside me, absolutely shocked.

"T-Tekk?" She asked.

"Yeah." I responded. My voice was hoarse. I hadn't used it in over a year. I marveled for a moment as my lungs filled with air.

"What? How?" She stammered. "I thought you-"

"Died?" I croaked. It almost hurt to talk. "No, I'm very much alive."

Nicole seemed frightened.

"What are you-?" She started, but I interrupted.

"I want to see Marsh. Is she home?"

Nicole stopped, mouth still open. Something passed across her eyes, an emotion I couldn't read.

"She… no." She said.

"Can you take me to her?" I asked. Nicole looked down.

"Tekk, look, there's a lot of things you've missed, and-" I interrupted her again.

"Nicole, you can explain everything later. Right now I want to see my wife." I could feel the ring lightly tugging at me. Nicole sighed and closed her eyes. She floated up into the air. "Follow me." She said, sounding resigned, and she started flying away from the city.

I followed behind her, my heart racing. Sure, Nicole would be upset that I returned. I'd proven difficult to kill, and now I had no reason to try and stay on everyone's good side. She'd lost all power over me. She couldn't try and keep me a secret anymore and I sure as hell wasn't going to be taking orders from anyone. I would just live with Marsh and make us as happy as we could be. If people wanted to fight us, let them come. I would protect my family and nothing else. And when I didn't do anything but that, people would eventually leave me alone. Maybe even accept me. Nicole was worried right now, but that wouldn't last for long.

Below us, people looked up in interest and then quickly, uncomfortably looked down again. It was strange that they'd be so afraid of me after a year. Even then, most of the city hadn't been in the mob. Only a few people. Those few were still a lot of people, sure, but for almost everyone in the city to be terrified of me was strange. Unless I'd become something of a legend or a ghost story in the time I'd been gone.

I noticed that we were leaving the suburbs of the city. The building became fewer and fewer. We were nowhere near my home. In fact, we were approaching a scenic overlook on the far end of the city, almost to the city limits. Nicole led me to the top of a hill where a large elm tree stood. She lighted down near the elm tree. I followed her, looking around desperately for Marsh. I couldn't see anyone here. I landed next to Nicole, looking puzzled. She pointed away from the tree. I followed to where she was pointing, scanning the area for something that might lead me to Marsh. I kept walking, looking back to Nicole, who had her eyes closed and a somber expression on her face. I felt the ground change under my foot, from soft, springy grass, to a flat, hard stoney surface. I looked down.

It was a small epitaph, with words engraved in it. I felt my heart drop as I read the words.

 _Marsh Ida Lanyang_

 _June 1st, 3215 ~ ~ October 15, 3237_

I was in shock. My throat was dry, closed up. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see straight. All I could feel was my ring, pulling straight down from where I was standing. For the better part of a year, it would seem, I had thought it was pulling me to my future. It was apparent, now however, that it was pulling me towards Hell.


	17. 016 - Everything Breaks

**ACT 3**

" _The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism."_

 _016 - Everything Breaks_

My legs went limp and I fell onto the soft grass of Marsh's grave. I couldn't see for the tears streaming from my eyes.

" _H-how…?_ " I gasped. Nicole approached me slowly and stopped behind me.

"She… She went into labor… There were… well, there were complications… The baby was stillborn, and they couldn't stop the bleeding. The doctors said… they said…" Nicole seemed hesitant. My heart ached like it'd never hurt before. But I needed to know. I needed something. Anything. The more I knew the better, even though I felt my own will to live draining away.

"What did they say?" I hissed.

"They said… that she didn't have any fight in her. When the baby died. Came out dead. They said they could see the light fade from her eyes and everything beyond that was just… hopeless."

She'd thought she had lost me. Our child was the only thing keeping her going. And when it died, the last bit of me died with it. And then she died.

She was dead. While my heart was clearly experiencing exactly what it meant for her to be gone from this world, my brain simply couldn't accept it. I had spent the last year, and it _was_ a year I discovered, staying alive just to see her again. And she simply wasn't here anymore. I could feel rage building up inside me. The injustice of it all. The last time I'd seen her, she was being trampled in a mob, trying to protect the child growing inside of her. I saved her from that. I _saved_ her. How could she be dead? That wasn't fair. That wasn't _right._

I started to yell. It started off as a sob, then grew into a pained scream. A bestial shout of rage and misery from some dark place inside of me. It tore at my throat. I pounded the ground below me with my fists. I needed to hit something. To hurt something. I eventually stopped screaming. I panted. I could taste blood in the back of my throat.

Nicole stepped a little closer to me.

"Tekk, I-" She began.

"The Chaos Siphon…" I gasped. It hurt to talk. Nicole stopped.

"Marsh wouldn't have-"

"The Chaos Siphon… Tails… Who gave him the idea for the Chaos Siphon?" I stared into Marsh's epitaph. Nicole hesitated.

"Tekk, you have to understand-" She began.

" _Go._ " I seethed. She disappeared in a haze of pixels.

I knelt in front of Marsh's grave for days. My mind was racing to find something to latch onto, but never found anything. Every thought I had either drifted away or repeated itself until it lost coherence. At one point it rained. I know Nicole tried coming back a couple of times, but I couldn't hear what she tried to say.

Finally, something clicked in my brain and I stood up. I felt numb. There were no more tears to shed. I didn't even feel sad anymore. My heart felt like the inky void I'd just crossed to arrive at this hilltop. I had a vague notion to head to my house. In the back of my mind, I had an idea of photographs. Maybe a home video. Maybe some garment of hers left in a closet that still smelled like her. Anything to prove to me that she wasn't completely gone. I walked across the city like a man who was already dead. People whispered as I marched slowly down the streets, but I paid them no mind. If I'd flown, I could've been there in moments, but I needed to move my legs. I needed to feel the muscles tighten and relax. I needed to feel like I was pushing myself forward. If I stopped, it would be over.

I arrived at the house I had once lived in at sundown. I could tell from the outside that things had changed. As I turned the knob at the door, I discovered that it was locked. I had never had a lock on my door before. I blasted the door off of its hinges. The faux-wood door bounced off a couple of walls before being absorbed into the floor and nanites rebuilt the door behind me. I could see from the living room that the house had been cleaned. There were no photos on the walls. Nothing to show that anyone had ever lived here. I climbed the stairs to the bedroom, knowing what I'd find. The bed had been made, but these weren't my sheets. Not my blankets. There were no clothes in the drawers nor in the closet. The bookshelves were empty.

She had died and they immediately cleaned out everything that had ever belonged to her and got the house ready for someone else to move in. All of our photo albums were gone. All of her clothes, all of her possessions, vanished. Even the marriage license we'd framed and hung on our wall. It was gone. She was gone. She was gone.

I lay down on the bed, not bothering with the covers. I hadn't thought I could cry anymore. But I slowly cried myself to sleep that night.

When I awoke, Nicole was sitting in one corner of the room, in a chair she conjured up from the floor. She was staring off into space.

"They don't trust me anymore." She said in a toneless voice. I stared at her, unblinking.

"People were paranoid about the Freedom Fighter's methods after your… after _the incident_. And then… At the _worst possible time_ , some witch from the east blew into town. She could control robots. Electronics. Anything that ran on power, she could control. She dominated the Dark Egg Legion and led them to our doorstep. Then… then she dominated me. Turned me into her slave program, to spy on everyone. I did… I did terrible things…" Nicole sounded like she was starting to cry.

"Even now that she's gone and I'm back to how I used to be, people are scared. The paranoia hasn't gone. I thought I was reclusive or shy before… Now I can only show myself to my friends, and even then, only when no one else is around." She took a deep breath and sighed.

"This is the beginning of the end of me, I think. No one in the government is saying it yet, and no one has said it out loud. But there are whispers in houses that I can hear. I can't _not_ hear. They look at the walls and speculate if the nanites could hold their form without me. If someone could write a program that was controlled by living creatures, and not by me."

Silence filled the air. Sunlight filtered in through the window, a pale, drab grey. I could see dust motes floating in the air between us. If I looked closely enough, I could see dust motes floating through _her_. She wasn't really here. She wasn't really anywhere.

"So I understand a little of what you must be going through." She said, a small, sad smile spreading across her face. I felt something clench inside of me.

"You lost your credibility, but you still have people who rely on you. Who trust you. The person who ever felt that way towards me is buried on a hill on the other side of the city. And she is there, in part because of what you did to me."

Nicole blushed and looked down, smile gone from her face.

"I was naive and trusting when you fed me this line about what Tails wanted. About how I could help him further his research. You claimed that you trusted me. You claimed to be my friend. Then you sat by while I helped build the only weapon that could stop me. You monitored my every move, nervous of the day that I turned on everyone like a rabid pet. You stabbed me in the back and then congratulated yourself on doing such a good job of protecting everyone, and now you want me to empathize with you because no one _trusts_ you anymore?" I did my best to keep the loathing out of my voice as I said this. I can't say if I was entirely successful.

"I've lost the purpose of my existence!" Nicole shouted, anger flooding her voice.

"I lost my wife!" I shouted back, surprised to find that I was standing. "And my child." I added. I sat back down. It became real to me in that instance and I felt overwhelmed.

"... It was a girl…" Nicole said in a sad, small voice. And for a moment, I glimpsed what might've been. The three of us, walking up a hill, Marsh in jeans and a blouse, myself in a T-shirt and shorts. And stomping just ahead of us, arms outstretched half to keep her balance, half to make herself feel bigger, was my daughter. Wearing a pink, grass-stained dress. An orange little ball of fur, with her mother's icy eyes, blazing with focus on marching up the steep hill without falling. I could see her turning around, looking crossly at us and telling us to hurry up, even though we were right behind her.

And then I was back again. Reality surrounded me and the fantasy was gone. I was in a house with no heart, in a room with no color, talking to a woman with no substance. And I could feel the first sparks of a fire burning in the void where my heart used to be.

"... I hate you…" The words caught me by surprise. I wasn't even aware that I was saying them until I saw Nicole's eyes widen.

"Wha-?" She began.

"I hate you. I hate what you did to me. Where you led me. I cannot, _will_ not ever forgive you for this."

"I was only trying to help!"

"No, Nicole, you were only trying to help yourself. You knew that if I came out, your job as protector of the city would be in jeopardy."

"I didn't point that Chaos Siphon at you! I didn't whip a mob into a frenzy! I didn't kill Marsh!" She was getting angry now.

"You came up with the concept of the Chaos Siphon and gave it to Tails to develop. Maybe Tails didn't even realize that it was a weapon. But you knew. And you might not have created that mob, but you watched it form. I saw Sarah and Kline in that crowd. You knew they were starting to fear me, and you sat back and let it happen. At no point did you try to talk them down, to talk anybody down. You let that fear and hatred grow. You would've been the only person I could've counted on to watch things develop while I was forced out of the Freedom Fighters, and you did _nothing._ " I spat the words.

There was silence between us. Finally, she straightened herself and said, "You can't stay here. This isn't your house anymore. You have to leave."

"No," I glared at her, "You go."

She started to protest, but stopped abruptly. The chair below her was evaporating, as were the walls and floor around her. Parts of her hologram started to fade out.

"What is this? What are you doing? Why aren't the nanites responding?" She asked, panic spreading across her face.

"They aren't nanites anymore, Nicole. They carbon, silicon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, nickel, zinc. They're dozens of atoms floating in the air or piling onto the ground." Her hologram faded as the nanite transmitters in the walls of the house dissolved. In the past year, I had gotten very good at destroying the covalent bonds of molecules. The house around me slowly turned into a cloud of dust. It wasn't a home any more, and soon, it wouldn't even be a building.

Nicole wasn't actually harmed. Not physically, anyways. I'm sure she was shaken when she discovered someone who could actively nullify her nanites. The tiny machines just fell apart under my scrutiny, just like the Eggmechs so very long ago.

It felt oddly liberating to destroy that house. Using my powers on such a massive scale and in a place where everyone could see it. It was like I was discovering for the first time that I was above the petty rules of the masses. There was nothing I couldn't do if I wanted to. With my power, I should be ruling over all of these people. It was such a simple concept. I couldn't believe that I had ever let their collective will keep me under their control. I needed to sit atop a throne and exercise my power, dole out justice where there was none, and punish those who were false. And I would do it, too... Except that I couldn't stay there any longer. On Mobius, I mean. Every second I was there, I was keenly aware that Marsh wasn't. It was unbearable. And in the back of Tails' laboratory, hidden under a tarp, was the escape.

 **Full disclosure, I couldn't continue with the "This Was How" theme of the chapters. It was, what I thought, a great idea at the beginning, but it slowly became a headache trying to phrase "This Was How" into something interesting without getting repetitive. I mean, how many chapters referenced storms in the second act? Sloppy.**

 **Heading into Act 3, and as Tekk changes his way of viewing the world, so will I change the way I title my chapters.**


	18. 017 - Flight of the Fox

_017 - Flight of the Fox_

I looked around me at the dark dungeon walls. There wasn't much to see. The stone was damp and parts were starting to grow lichen. I could hear snarling from somewhere in the distance, echoing and bouncing off the walls. That would be Rosie. I squeezed the binder in my hands a little tighter. I was fortunate that Tails had kept all his data on Moebius in hard copy in his lab. I had worried that I'd have to break into his file system on his computer or, worst case scenario, wing it when I arrived.

The Warp Ring had been right where I'd last seen it. It hadn't been connected to any power source, but since it ran on Chaos Energy, it was simple enough to get it running. When I'd stepped inside, I wasn't ready for the disorientation. I stepped into a place of limitless space, with roads leading every which way. I mean, every way. Forward and backward, side to side, up and down. Some roads looped back on themselves. This was the No Zone I'd heard about. I was worried that I'd get lost, but it was surprisingly simple to find Moebius. The road was the widest and it was the only one that had litter leading up to the exit.

While I was walking, I researched Tails' notes on the anti-Mobians. In a nutshell, whatever natural instinct existed in Mobius, their parallel universe counterpart would have the opposite. And so, the Freedom Fighters from my world were nasty, violent, and self-serving in their world. The information was a little out of date, however. There were quite a few months between the last entry and when I'd entered the Warp Ring. Anything could've changed by then, but this was what I had to go on.

Scourge, once (anti) Sonic, had been defeated by the Freedom Fighters, when half of his team, turned on him. He'd stolen a lot of Chaos Energy and used it to become a ruthless dictator. The anti-Sally, Tails, Rotor, and Antoinne had all turned on him and the few that remained loyal to him to depose him.

As far as I knew, Scourge was in this dungeon right now, slowly rotting. But I doubted it. Anti-Sally wouldn't have been stupid enough to keep him close by. Or, rather, the Anti-Tails. Notes on both of them indicated that while anti-Sally, called Alicia here, was the ruling regent, it was anti-Tails, called Miles here, who actually pulled the strings. I wasn't entirely sure how that dynamic worked.

I must also confess that I was never entirely sure how to pronounce the name of their world. I'd only ever seen it written as 'Moebius', but whether that was pronounced no different than 'Mobius' or if it was 'Moh-EH-bee-yuss" I never could figure out. But I digress.

I was here for a purpose. I came to rule.

I had chosen Moebius for several reasons. The first, and most important was that killing Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends, seemed like a surprisingly impossible task. Somehow, that group of Mobians had survived certain death time and time again. Even with the Chaos Siphons destroyed, and I _had_ destroyed them, I wasn't sure that they couldn't find some other way to defeat me with the power of friendship or love or some other saccharine fuckery.

Second was that I had an element of surprise here. Moebius had been cut off from news of the our world long before I showed up. This meant that no one here would anticipate what I could do or even who I was. This would be easy, if not a little fun.

Third was that, as unhinged as I felt back then, I had to find some justice in the universe. And since there was none to be found in Mobius, I left to make some of my own. I couldn't justify killing Sonic or Tails or any of them, no matter how much I fantasized about it at times. They were the good guys. Nicole would get what was coming to her soon enough, and Tails… Well, Tails was just a boy. What did he know? Maybe, in some future time, I might feel differently, but at the time, I didn't want to dominate Mobius. I would rather that it just didn't exist. Fleeing to another universe seemed like the best way of doing that.

Lastly, I couldn't live on a planet where Marsh had died. I couldn't explain it, but the thought of staying on Mobius, even just to go back to my former life, was unbearable. Everywhere I went I was painfully aware of who wasn't there. I couldn't face it. So I ran.

Ran straight into this dungeon… I had expected the Warp Ring to be in some sort of laboratory or something. At the bottom of a dungeon seemed strange to me. It was leaned haphazardly against a wall in a corner with a sheet thrown over it, so maybe it was left down here to rot, along with Rosie. Another growl echoed off the walls, definitely feminine in nature. I could hear the words, "Smashy bits" faintly in the distance between unintelligible muttering.

A couple of torches illuminated the dungeon, but only barely. Long shadows were cast by the support pillars and the ruined remains of furniture. Rosie had probably smashed anything that _could_ be smashed. I definitely didn't want to run into Rosie. Not that I was afraid of her. Well, no, I was afraid of her, in the same way that one is afraid of someone whose actions can never be anticipated. But I wasn't afraid of _dealing_ with her. I was afraid that in doing so, I might lose my advantage.

I moved silently through the underground chambers, keeping a watchful third eye on Rosie pacing back and forth in a corner of the dungeon. I reached the stairs and force-pushed the lock open. I heaved open the heavy wooden door and quickly shut it behind me, locking it again. No sense in letting Rosie out.

The cut-stone stairway wound upwards. This was an actual castle, like the one they used to have in Knothole or Mobotropolis. I hadn't thought to a building like this ever again. Torches burned in sconces on the stone walls. Large banners hung from the walls. It reminded me that the shift to a parliamentary system was relatively new for Mobius. Evidently, it hadn't ever caught on here.

A low hissing rumble echoed down the stairs as I climbed them. It was a rain storm, I was sure. A slightly louder rumble echoed down to me. Thunder. This seemed portentous to me.

I reached the top of the stairs and looked at the chamber before me. Large vaulted ceilings rose high into the air. The floor and the walls were made of cut stone, so grey and dark that even the torchlight failed to bring much light into the spacious room. Tall stained glass windows decorated the walls, occasionally flashing bright colors as lightning struck somewhere behind them. Banners and tapestries hung high on the walls, each bearing what I could only assume was the Acorn royal family's coat of arms. A large crimson carpet was spread from the large wooden doors, up a small set of stairs, and onto a small landing where two thrones sat. One was slightly taller and more ornate than the other. This was, obviously, the throne room.

I took a deep breath and felt out around me. There were guards posted on the other side of the great door. Many were patrolling the walls outside. Two were making their rounds down a hallway which led back to the throne room. I would be gone long before they reached the throne room, I decided, as I found what I was looking for. I quickly headed to the back of the throne room, towards more stairs hidden behind a tapestry in the corner of the room. The tower above me was the entrance to the royal living quarters.

As I reached a hallway, I noticed several paintings of the royal lineage through the ages. Many had been defaced, likely by Scourge. Crude speech bubbles had been drawn on in marker over the delicate oil paints, filled with vulgar quips. Occasionally glasses or a rude mustache would be scrawled on a face. I reached the end of the lineage and found two that were untouched. First was of Scourge himself. He looked like Sonic the Hedgehog had dyed his quills an acid green. A leather jacket with embroidered flames on the sleeves only augmented his self-chosen "bad boy" look, which was further sealed by his choice of edgy sunglasses he had propped up on his forehead. His teeth were sharpened to points. I rolled my eyes. He looked like a lazily scrapped together villain from a children's story. He was clearly evil because no part of him looked natural.

The second portrait was of Sally and Tails. No, this was Alicia and Miles. Alicia was in a large, white dress and Miles was in a tuxedo. I stifled a laugh. Alicia had the worn look of someone who has had to endure a lot of pain, much of which was surely self-inflicted. Her eyes still had the resolve that I'd seen in Sally's whenever I'd see her in the propaganda vids, but her lids were heavier here, dark creases under them. The resolve said less of, 'we can do anything we put our minds to,' and more 'I will do what must be done'. Next to her, in what was clearly an attempt at being pompous was Miles. He looked just like the Tails I knew, except, for some reason, he'd dyed his head fur black, and combed it over. Taken at face value, this was a wedding portrait. But it didn't take a close examination to see that Alicia wasn't thrilled about marrying a boy, and Miles still had very child-like notions of what adulthood were. This was amusing to me. I'm sure that the honeymoon was a nightmare.

Evidently, it was a nightmare that had continued. As I crept down the hallway, I could hear voices from behind one of the doors.

"Please?" A boyish voice pleaded.

"I already told you no." A woman replied, voice sounding husky with weariness.

"I can keep it together this time."

"Doubtful."

"At some point, this marriage will have to be legitimized." The boy said, trying to sound forceful. Instead, it sounded peevish. The woman's voice laughed.

"Well, the moment you can stop yourself from popping the moment you see a breast, then maybe it will. But it won't happen tonight."

I bit down on my fist to stop from laughing.

"I was nervous!" He sounded angry. The woman only laughed harder.

"Awww… Did the big, grown up woman make you feel all funny down there?" She asked in a baby voice.

"Shut up…" The boy muttered. "It won't happen again…"

"Oh I'm sure…" She said, unconvinced. Lightning flashed and illuminated the hallway briefly. Almost immediately a deafening boom shook the windows. The storm was right on top of us.

"Did the thunder scare you, little boy?"

"I'm the king!" He yelled.

"Then tell me, King, do you even know what to do with a lady?" She asked.

"I-I do!" He stammered. "I-I mean… I understand how it works and everything, I just don't…"

I took a deep breath. It was time to do what I'd come here to do. I stretched a little and then kicked down the heavy wood door. Wood splintered as it tore away from the hinges. Yells of terror filled my ears as I entered Queen Alicia's quarters. It was a large, circular room, dominated by a large king-sized bed. A large semicircular wardrobe was pressed against a wall and a large glass door opened up onto a balcony on the other side of the room. Miles gave a shout and fell out of the bed. Alicia, on the other hand, was almost immediately on her feet. She was wearing a long, pink nightdress. Miles scrambled to his feet, wearing striped pajamas.

"Who are you?" Alicia demanded.

"Your new king." I stated cooly.

Miles forced out a laugh. "King? I'm the king!"

"Not until it's been _legitimized_." Alicia said, shooting him a look. Miles blushed in anger.

"You have the choice. Kneel here and surrender the crown to me, or die." I said, walking slowly towards Miles.

"What makes you think you could kill me? My royal guard will be here in moments."

"They'll find it difficult to enter your quarters, what with them being barred from the inside."

"Fool! You kicked the door down! How do you-" Miles began, but the door was repairing itself behind me. A shower of splinters flew through the air and formed themselves under the iron hinges and the door slammed back into its place. A loud click sounded as the door locked behind us.

"What… how…?" Miles stammered, his eyes wide. Alicia was speechless as well.

"Kneel, Miles. Kneel, Alicia." I commanded. Alicia stood by, silent. Miles kept backing up until his back pressed against the cool glass of the door leading to the balcony.

"Y-y-you can f-fix a door. That's n-n-not that imp-p-pressive…" Miles said, trying to sound brave. His legs were shaking, his tails low to the ground and starting to curl up underhim, his ears flat against his head. I rolled my eyes and lifted a hand. All of the furniture in the room raised off the ground and started spinning quickly around the room. Alicia dropped to the ground, hands on her head.

"You've got until the count of three. One…" An ornate sword that had been on the wall flew through the air and stopped an inch from Mile's face, the point quivering. Just then, there was a pounding at the door. The guards had finally arrived. In my distraction, Miles found the handle to the balcony and dashed outside. He was almost instantly soaked, but he took off, his tails spinning and rotating. He floated a yard away from the edge of the balcony. I followed him outside, feeling the warm rain soak my fur almost instantly. Miles was laughing.

"Go ahead! Throw anything you've got at me! I can dodge anything in the air!" He swooped and dodged left and right as if to prove his point.

"You'll probably want to come back down…" I said quietly. He blinked.

"What?"

"I said, you're going to want to come back to the balcony. It's dangerous up there." I said, a little louder over the storm. Miles laughed again.

"You've got to be kidding me! You want me to come over to you? No, that's not a smart move. And I know a lot about smart moves. I'm the puppet-master, don't you understand? If it weren't for me, Scourge would've just been another angry citizen of this hellhole! It not for my brains, we'd never have been able to overthrow him! It's my intelligence that got me this crown! And you think a stupid line like 'it's dangerous up there' is going to get me to come to your murderous reach? You think I'm going to fight you on even ground, just because you can't _fly?_ " He asked, laughing, rain pouring down his face.

"What?" I said. "I can fly." Miles looked puzzled. "I'm just not stupid enough to do it in a thunderstorm." Miles looked confused for another second before a blindingly bright dagger of light shot through him, followed by an ear-shattering boom. The stench of burnt fur filled my nose as I watched a small, burned, fox body drop from the sky and land with a terrible, wet sound onto the stones below.

I let the door to the room open as I stepped back inside. Four guards, armed with swords and spears rushed into the room. They looked around confused, but kept their weapons trained on me.

"Who are you?" One of them asked, looking at Alicia for guidance.

"I'm Tekk Ivan Lanyang." I said, spreading my arms wide.

"And _he_ is your new king…" Alicia said, sitting down on the bed and giving me a queer look.


	19. 018 - I Am No Damocles

018 - I Am No Damocles

The throne wasn't entirely uncomfortable. That is to say, there was plenty of padding and the upholstering was very soft and plush. But the overall structure of it was rigid and unmoving. I was forced to sit up straight or even lean forward in order to sit it at all. In the smaller throne, to the left of me, sat Alicia, dressed in a very plain pantsuit. For my part, I was wearing a grey suit with a dress shirt. An orange tie matching my fur was the only color I wore. The crown on my head was heavy, but it being gold, it shouldn't surprise anyone. In fact, the only surprise I had was that there was still such a crown. I was sure that someone would've melted it down for bullion already.

There was no pomp and circumstance for my coronation. I forbade it. There were still elements of my master plan that needed some degree of surprise and a large ceremony would shine a spotlight on me. And coronations are great places for ambushes to be laid for usurpers like myself. I didn't fear them, of course. But I had a plan.

Chiefly, I wanted Scourge, once Anti-Sonic, to come to me. He was bound to, of course. He'd been deposed by Miles and Alicia, no doubt they'd be number one on his revenge list when he came back around. I was hoping that wherever he was, he wouldn't know I had become the ruler until he stormed the throne.

But that was for another day. On this day, was a day for court. In the old days, this would've been a time for lords and knights to come and pledge loyalty to the king, ask for blessings or air grievances to the throne. I would have been settling land disputes, establishing strategic marriages between nobles, and handing down edicts from on high pertaining to the little people. But, government moved on and left the monarchy behind. A panel of high judges ran most affairs of the country, only coming to the regent if they couldn't decide on their own. And since that would mean relinquishing power they held, nothing ever came before the king unless it was so controversial that no one judge wanted to be seen as making a solid stance one way or another.

And so that day I sat on that rigid chair with Alicia on my left looking vaguely sick, entertaining foreign dignitaries that wanted to reassure that whatever treaties we had with them were going to be upheld by the new king, just as they were with the old. This was a decision mostly made by the judges, but it was expected of them to appeal to me just as it was my job to shake their hands, offer them accommodations in my kingdom, and tell them that the judges appointed would surely be up to the task of deciding whether or not the tariffs and taxes established should be revised. It was very boring. But this was my duty.

Eventually, the last politician had left the throne room and Alicia and I were left alone with a handful of guards standing at attention. I rose and stretched myself. Alicia followed and we retired back to the quarters upstairs. She was followed by a pair of guards who locked her in her room and forbade her exit for any reason other than my own command.

She had once been given her freedom to go where she wished within the castle walls. She'd lost that privilege not too long after.

From day one, she'd been trying to seduce me. Touching me whenever she got the chance, walking closer to me than necessary. She even would try and whisper flirtations to me whenever we were alone. She was determined to be a ruler again. Be my queen and ensure her place in the kingdom. Or, at the very least, save her own skin.

But she'd gotten desperate. Her flirtatious overtures started getting more lewd and less subtle. Eventually, she tried to sneak, naked, into my bed chambers at night. I was awake (I rarely slept anymore) and her subtle plan to slip into my bed while I slept fell to pieces.

I have to admit, I was tempted. I'd harbored a crush on Princess Sally since I was a child. But at that time, with Marsh still so fresh in my heart and mind, I felt a strange rage come over me. It was all I could do to keep from pulling her limb from limb. I threw her down the hallway and commanded guards to keep watch over her door. I kept a rotation going so no two guards watched her twice. I didn't want her to be able to convince a guard over the course of a few nights that she deserved to be set free. As it was, I'd had to cull a lot of the guards stationed in the castle to eliminate all those with the utmost loyalty to the Acorn lineage.

Alicia was now just arm candy. She showed up to lend me credibility. But she did nothing else but take up space. She seethed and her rage built every day I sat the throne.

"You know," she said, one evening during dinner, "there's a story about a man who wanted to be king."

I watched her eat. I never ate anything.

"Oh? Do tell." I said.

"There once was a great king," she said, "who had a commoner friend named Damocles. The king would invite Damocles to his court once a year to partake in the splendors of his wealth. And one year, Damocles told the king, 'Oh, how I wish I were you! You live in such finery and eat such rich banquets. If only I were a king, then I too would be able to live such a life of luxury!'"

Alicia paused to drink from her cup.

"The king got an idea and told Damocles, 'tomorrow, your wish will come true. You will go to sleep tonight in my bed and tomorrow you will be treated as though you were a great king.' Damocles could scarcely believe his ears. He went to bed after the feast in the king's own bed. He awoke on a mattress of the softest fabric imaginable. When he sat up, servants helped him dress in fine silks and boots of polished leather. They led him to the dining room where a sumptuous spread was laid before him of all of his favorite dishes. And at the far end of the table was the king."

"'Damocles!' the king said, 'how does this kingly life suit you?' 'It suits me fine,' Damocles responded, 'I appreciate your kindness and charity in letting me sit in your place.' 'It is no kindness, friend. Please, look up.' And above the chair in which sat Damocles was a large, iron sword, suspended by its hilt from the ceiling by a single strand of hair."

"Damocles scrambled out of the chair just as a breeze from an open window swept past the blade. The hair snapped and the sword fell quivering into the chair where Damocles once sat. The king arose and helped Damocles to his feet, embracing him. 'Friend,' the king said, 'not a day goes by that an assassin does not plot my death, nor a warlord scheme to overthrow my very kingdom and see that my head is skewered on a spike. That is the price I pay for all this wealth.'"

I rolled my eyes.

"Very cute story," I said, "and how have you survived this sword over your head for so long then, Alicia?"

She smiled into her soup. "I always made sure I switched places with Damocles the day before it fell."

That sword fell at the end of another day at court. The sun was sinking beyond the horizon, casting the throne room into a violet haze when I heard guards scrambling beyond the great doors. A shuddering boom echoed through the halls. Alicia perked up at my left, curious and also a little afraid.

Guards were shouting when another boom echoed. Another boom and then a loud, earsplitting, crash, as the doors flew open.

Standing in the now open doorway was a acid-green hedgehog with sharpened teeth. On his right hand was a red vixen in a leather catsuit and behind them a hawk, a huge gorilla, a wild-eyed frog, and a lynx with a lightning motif on his clothing.

"Honey!" The green hedgehog yelled into the chamber, "I'm home!" He spread his arms wide, grinning wickedly. I raised my eyebrows, unimpressed. His eyes tracked from Alicia to me and then back to Alicia.

"Lissy? You got some 'splainin' to do!"

I could see Alicia tense up stiff as a board. She was terrified of this hedgehog. This was very clearly Scourge. I surmised that the vixen he was with was none other than Fiona Fox. I wasn't quite sure who the other four were, but they were unimportant.

"What is this?" Scourge asked, walking slowly into the throne room. "Alicia, did you trade in for an older model? What happened to Tails? You can't expect me to believe that this is the same two-tailed freak I saw last time?"

Fiona smirked , following close behind Scourge.

"Oh, no, Scourge, this is a new guy altogether. Ooh, and looky that, he's got himself a gold crown. Bet he thinks he's king." She said.

"No, that can't be it. This dump only ever had one real king, and that was yours truly." Scourge suddenly stopped smiling, turning it into a withering scowl, "Until a pack of traitors stole it from me."

I stood up straight.

"You must be Scourge. Good, I've been expecting you." I said.

"Don't pull that nonchalant 'I've been expecting you' bullshit!" Scourge spat. "Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my throne?"

"I'm King Tekk Lanyang." I stated simply.

"I thought Tails thought he ran the show. Where's that pipsqueak hiding?"

"He's dead."

Scourge looked nonplussed. He tried to regain composure quickly.

"What, you some big man now that you offed an eight year-old?" I could tell that the rest of his group seemed perturbed by this information as well. Fiona suddenly seemed less sure of what was happening.

"I didn't kill him. He decided to go fly in a thunderstorm. I told him to come down, didn't I Alicia?" I turned to her. She was wide-eyed with fear.

"Y-yeah… He said it…" She stammered out. Fiona laughed.

"So, you're Scourge, and I can only assume you're Fiona… Who are the rest of you?"

Scourge seemed to have been waiting for exactly this question.

"We're the Destructix! We just broke out of jail and we're here to conquer the multiverse. And we're gonna start by kicking your sorry asses and taking the Warp Ring!" Scourge snapped his fingers and the four behind him rushed forward. They bounded across the throne room, leaping high into the air, ready to land on me.

My eyes flashing turquoise, I grabbed them in the air and held them there. The look of confidence in battle fled as they hung in the air, motionless. Scourge and Fiona had stopped smiling altogether.

"Look, I don't want to be rude…" I said, looking at each one of them, "But I really have no idea who you four are."

"They're-" Fiona began. I stared at her.

"If they were important, I'd know who they were already, Fiona, thank you. As it is," I said, turning my attention back on the four floating in front of me, "I'm sorry, but I just don't think I care who you are." And I unraveled them. The four bodies in the air quickly became four piles of dust. Scourge's eyes were wide with fear. Fiona started backing towards the door. I reassembled the door behind them, bolting it shut with the large cross-beam that the gorilla had broken down.

"Oh, no. Going so soon, Fiona? But you just got here." I said, stepping down from the landing the thrones rested on. "I insist that you stay."

Scourge gritted his teeth and sped towards me. I was prepared to deal with his super-speed however. Immediately I went into my slow-time reflex. He was approaching me at a walking pace now. I crossed the room to stand behind him, extending one foot to trip him. Time sped back up and I felt his foot catch onto my leg solidly. He skidded to a stop on his face.

"Scourge, you've got to be faster than that." I mocked.

He picked himself back up and rushed at me again. He leapt into the air and spun, green quills whizzing like a buzz saw. With time slowed down, I sidestepped his somersaulting attack and kicked him square in the side of the head. He flew across the room and collided with a pillar.

"So, I guess all that the Master Emerald ever did was just dye your quills that nasty shade of green then? You can't honestly believe that it left you with no power at all…?" I taunted. Scourge got back up, shaking his head.

"It gave me enough power to beat you!" He yelled, curling up into a spin-dash.

"No," I said, raising a hand lazily, "I don't think so."

I'd forgotten about Fiona. At that moment, I saw a boot in my peripheral vision. Time slowed as I ducked under her roundhouse, kicked her leg out from under her and slammed a fist downwards into her stomach. Time kicked back to normal speed with Fiona's loud "OOMPH!" as she hit the stone floor dazed. Scourge was speeding towards me, a razor-ball of fury. I picked him up and held him in the air until he stopped spinning.

I grabbed Fiona and held her up next to Scourge, arms and legs spread-eagle in front of me.

"Alright," I yelled into the throne room, "I've had my fun. Bring them in." Servants came from the dungeon carrying iron shackles and chains. Four of them, slower than the rest, were carrying something heavy between them.

"These," I said, as Fiona and Scourge were being cuffed, "I had made specially for you."

The four servants set down what looked to be two heavy boxes in front of Scourge. They were filled with a liquid grey cement.

"Concrete shoes. For the hedgehog on the go!" I smiled sardonically. The servants picked up the boxes and shoved Scourge's feet into them. The concrete instantly dried, the boxes falling away from them. "I help them dry quicker. I know you! No patience at all!" I laughed. The servants finished with the iron shackles and I let Fiona and Scourge down.

"Is the iron really that necessary for me?" Scourge said, looking down at the chain that connected his concrete shoes together.

"Absolutely. See, that's what you guys here in Moebius just don't get. What none of anyone who tries to deal with Sonic, any Sonic, ever really gets. Dont. Give. Him. An inch! I mean, sure, you're not as clever or as good as the real Sonic, but why take my chances. Now, Fiona, you've got a room upstairs next to Alicia's. Scourge, I have a place for you in the dungeon, but don't worry, I hear you have a fan down there!" Scourge's defiance melted into fear.

"...Not… Rosie?" He asked, almost panicked.

"Don't worry, she's chained up. She can't get you. But she does want to tell her precious Sonic how much she wants to smash him into itty bitty bits. And she usually does it quite loudly."

Scourge was led down to the dungeons slowly, one lumbering step at a time. Guards were waiting at the top of the stairs to take him down. Fiona went quietly, still bruised, but more shellshocked than anything.

Alicia was still standing in front of her throne, staring at the four piles of dust that were once living beings. I stepped beside her and leaned in close to her.

"I am no Damocles."


	20. 019 - A Short Drop

_019 - A Short Drop_

A few months had passed since my capture of Scourge. My first real act after the fact was the announcement to all that I had taken the throne. With Scourge in chains and concrete, I had no issue proclaiming myself as king. On the contrary, at this point, it was better for me to be known as king as widely as possible. I had many things to do and much of them hinged on my ability to wield power openly.

The populace wasn't exactly thrilled that I had usurped the throne, but they mostly approved of my capture of Scourge. And with Alicia by my side, albeit unwillingly, the semblance of proper order was there. Rumours started floating throughout the kingdom of our upcoming nuptials, of which I could only (privately) laugh at. Alicia stayed in her room most of the day now, avoiding even court appearances. I think that she had really doubted my power or maybe she thought I wasn't capable of killing. But seeing four victims turn into a pile of disorganized atoms corrected any misgivings she might have had about me.

There were a handful of changes I made right away. First was bringing Dr. Kintobor, this universe's version of Dr. Eggman, into the court. He was just like Dr. Eggman, down to the orange bush moustache, but he was skinny. Gluttony, for food or pain, had never been a vice for Kintobor. On the contrary, his life's work was creating robots for the benefit of Moebius, despite the aggression from the native Moebians. Quite possibly the only Moebian that didn't loathe him was Buns, this universe's Bunny. Though this version hadn't gotten caught in a Roboticizer, fate had trapped her in another form of roboticization; she was suffering from a rare illness and the only treatment was spending her days in a large robotic prosthesis, the Omega Restoration Unit. In truth, she drove a large, bipedal robot everywhere she went and she was none too happy about it.

They both stood before the throne, Buns glaring at me petulantly, and Dr. Kintobor sweating profusely with fear. The guards on either side radiated their contempt for the pair. I tried to put them at ease.

"Dr. Kintobor, please, relax. I promise that no harm will come to either of you. I came here because I need your expertise and your help."

Dr. Kintobor blinked behind his dark, round sunglasses that obscured his eyes.

"H-help? Help you? With what?" He stammered.

"I've been told that you're the world's leading forerunner in applied Chaos Technology. That you know more about the Warp Ring than anyone else. In fact, I understand that you _built_ it, did you not?"

Dr. Kintobor nodded his head quickly, still shaking a little.

"I would like you to expand its power, if you can. Increase the portal size as much as you can while keeping the portal stabilized. I also need it to be secure. No remote accessing from other universes. Do you think you could do that?"

"Uh, er… Well…" Kintobor was nervously wringing his hands, "I suppose with the right energy sources… and the right supplies I _might_ be able to… But it would take time…"

I laughed lightly.

"Please, Dr. Kintobor, relax. This isn't a matter of urgency. Although, there is another matter that you might also be able to assist me with, though I will understand if it goes beyond your area of expertise."

He looked up at me, puzzled.

"In the dungeons is what was once a bright, clever little hedgehog by the name of Rosie. But magic powers addled her brain. I was hoping that there might be something in your ability to help this poor girl?"

"Rosie? I've wanted to help her for years, but I was never given the opportunity. I would like nothing more… But…" He seemed hesitant.

"She'll be sent with an escort until she can be confined safely in your laboratory." He seemed relieved.

"Is that gonna be all you need then?" Buns said in a drawling southern belle accent. "Or didja need me for somethin'?

I turned to her. She was glowering in her robot.

"Actually, yes. Thank you, Miss Rabbot." She blinked, nonplussed.

I started, but then hesitated. "Er, actually, Dr. Kintobor, could you please excuse us?"

"Yes, of course!" He said, bowing. "Your majesty!" He quickly added before scurrying out of the room.

"Ooh, well now, this seems like an interestin' turn of events if you're askin' the good doctor there to leave the room."

"I just don't think he'd necessarily… _approve_ of my request to you. I understand he feels somewhat… protective of you."

Buns snickered.

"More like the other way 'round, sugah. What have you got on your mind?"

"I need an army. And it doesn't take a genius to see that your native fighting ability is wasted on protecting the Doctor."

"You need an army? And you're asking lil' ol' me to get you one?"

"I'll provide the conscripts if you can train them."

"Sugah, maybe you didn't notice this two-ton pile of bolts I'm ridin' in, but my 'fightin' ability' ain't what it used to be."

"Right. Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, right? It's a rare, untreatable disease that starts at the base of the spine and slowly spreads to the entire body."

"I know what I got." She said, defiantly trying to keep the sadness out of her voice.

"If I recall correctly, it's a virus that moves along the neural pathways, destroying the myelin sheath and suppressing the immune system in the affected areas. Sort of a creeping, paralyzing form of AIDS."

"Y'all know your science, that's for sure." She said bitterly.

"I think we can strike a bargain. You know something about warfare, and I know something about molecular structuring. Train my army and I can cure your disease."

She blinked. I saw tears starting to form at the edges of her eyes.

"It's _incurable_. You would mock me and lie to me and try and give me hope that I'd… I'd _walk_ again? That I could live outside this damn _machine_? Ain't nothing is gonna help me now, just this… This… _Thing_ the doc's got me in. And even then, I know it's just a hold-over." Hot, angry tears were streaming down her face.

"Do y'all know what it's like to feel a little less every day? To one day be able to move your feet, the next, just your toes, and the next, nothin' at all?"

"I don't promise what I can't deliver." I said.

"Prove it." She spat. "Prove that y'all can work miracles then I'll make your goddamn army. But I ain't doin' nothin' until I see it."

I took a deep breath. I knew that I needed her to build my army months ago, after I'd captured Scourge, so I had been reading everything I could about her disease. I'd memorized the virus' molecular structure and knew exactly what needed to be changed. I'd practiced it out in my mind hundreds of times, but this time was for real.

I focused intensely on Buns, on her blood, on her cells. I found the virus hijacking her cells. I reached into the infected cell, where the mitosis was taking place and I made several key adjustments to the DNA being copied. The cell split and copied itself. The new cell had the new virus in it. This virus would spread faster than the NIDS virus, but would start to undo the damage that NIDS had caused on her body. It would target and consume the original virus and then start repairing the myelin on the damaged nerves. Once I saw that it took, I double checked my work. Triple checked it. Then I opened my eyes.

Buns was sitting in her robot prosthesis same as ever. She still looked angry and tear-stained.

"I've done my end of the bargain. By tomorrow, you'll only need that machine to walk. It no longer needs to act as an immune system for you. Ask Dr. Kintobor to test your blood if you don't believe me. You'll regain the use of your limbs eventually. I don't know when, exactly, but it should be faster than the time it took to lose them in the first place. Now, I expect to see you tomorrow to hold up your end of the bargain."

"Ah… I don't feel any different." She said, shock clear in her voice.

"You will. And then you will come back here and train my army. You may go now."

Buns turned her mech around and started towards the great doors.

"Oh, and Miss Rabbot?" I added before she left, "I giveth. But cross me and I'll take away everything, even what little you had before. Don't test me on this."

She left.

I found myself thinking about what Buns had said more and more over the next two weeks, about the creeping loss of feeling. It sounded familiar, though I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

She _did_ return the next day, overjoyed at the immune system in her mech being deactivated for the first time in years. She claimed she could even start feeling the tips of her toes, though I thought that it was more likely a placebo effect than anything. It would've taken weeks for her to start regaining any sensation. But she was happy, and more importantly, she was willing to train my army for me. And she started.

I hadn't truly understood why I felt that I needed an army, but after my showdown with Scourge, I had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind. Some subconscious process that knew that I would need an army sooner rather than later.

Dr. Kintobor was working on the Warp Ring and, as he told me in weekly updates, was making some progress in reversing Rosie's brain damage. This pleased me. I'd come to do justice, and healing Rosie and Buns were both parts of that justice.

Justice is what dictated the necessity of what happened next.

It was a cold, fall morning when I had Scourge brought up from the dungeons. He looked thinner, his eyes darker and less full of life. The area around his legs where they met the concrete blocks that covered his feet were scabbed and ruined.

"Scourge. Good to see you again. I trust you've been faring well in the dungeon?"

"You can go and royally fuck yourself, _your highness_." He spat with as much energy as he could muster.

A door opened behind me and an entourage of guards entered from the the back of the throne room. They were escorting Fiona Fox and Alicia. Fiona was still in chains, though Alicia was unshackled. She was wearing black.

"We're all here. Load him into the cart, the ladies will ride with me in my carriage." I ordered. The guards moved quickly, carrying Scourge away as I led the procession out to the front of the castle where our transport awaited.

I waited for Fiona and Alicia to enter the carriage before me and then I stepped up inside. The guards closed the door and after a short pause, the carriage started in motion.

Fiona had fared a little better than Scourge. She looked tired and less energetic, but otherwise healthy. She was wearing a brown leather jacket with some jeans. The catsuit had apparently disappeared from her wardrobe. She glared at me, then stared out the window seething. Finally, she couldn't take it any longer.

"Alright, so what's the big surprise? Where are we going? Where are you taking us?"

"You know, I never understood the war in Mobius." I replied, ignoring her question.

"With all the resources at their disposal, no one wanted to simply end the war. Oh, sure, Robotnik tried once or twice. But he never acted with finality. The only times that he did, he was thwarted. I suppose it was his own hubris that kept him from succeeding. He was lazy." I speculated.

"He kept trying harebrained schemes that could never work, kept trying death traps that should've worked but for one small thing here or there going awry. If he'd just filled a room with guns, electrified the floor and put one of Sonic's friends in the middle, I'm sure he could've fried that hedgehog no sweat."

Fiona cocked an eyebrow at me.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, our side was no better. I knew that even when I was fighting for them. I just kept assuming that they had some bigger plan underway. Some reason not to just kill the fat bastard and be done with it. But no, it was some misplaced sense of moral superiority that kept them dying and failing to end a war. On that level, Fiona, I think we can relate to one another. They go out of their way to act morally superior, but in the end, it just keeps getting their close ones killed. Or, at the very least, put in harm's way."

She blinked. Alicia was eyeing me too. Alicia had been somberly staring out the window until I'd started talking.

"Death is a finality. There's a quiet assurance in death that I can really appreciate." Noise was starting to drift from outside. A rabble coming from a large mass of people.

"Where are we?" Fiona asked.

"This is the town square." I said as the carriage came to a stop. The door opened onto a grand plaza filled with people. A path had been cleared in the throngs of Mobians, leading to a wooden platform in the center of the clearing. Erected above that was a simple archway of wood and a rope looped around to make a noose swinging lightly in the breeze. The color drained from Fiona's face.

"It's not for you, relax." I told her. "I just needed you to see."

"See what?" She asked, her voice quavering.

"Finality."

The guards grabbed Scourge from the cart in front of us and dragged him towards the gallows. Alicia, Fiona and I followed behind, circled by my guards. The crowds closest to us were shouting abuse at Scourge, Fiona, and then, occasionally, Alicia and me. Moebians are never really happy, it would seem.

We stepped up the stairs to stand on the gallows behind Scourge, as a squirrel with a black mask and hood carefully fitted the rope around Scourge's neck, avoiding the quills on his back. Finally, with everything in place, I stepped forward.

"Sonic Hedgehog, alias, Scourge!" I shouted. I magnified my voice slightly, and the crowd quieted down. I paused until silence fell over the mass of Moebians all staring up at us.

"You have been found guilty of the crimes of theft, grifting, assault, and, well, pretty much every crime there's a name to. The most severe of which is two counts of treason, first committed against your father, Jules Hedgehog, then against me, King Tekk Lanyang. Of these most grievous charges, the penalty is death by hanging, to be witnessed today by myself, and fair Princess Alicia, and before these good people. Do you have any last words you wish to impart upon us before your death?"

For the first time, the gravity of the situation fell upon Scourge, I think, because he opened his mouth to speak but found no words. He closed it again and looked down and closed his eyes.

"So be it." I commanded. I stepped back behind Alica and Fiona. "Don't look away." I whispered into their ears. I nodded to the executioner. He pulled a lever and the trap door beneath Scourge's feet dropped, with Scourge following it immediately afterwards. There was a loud snap as the rope drew taught. A low rumble washed over the crowd as they all began to murmur to themselves.

Scourge's lifeless body, weighted down by the concrete shoes, swung on that tight rope for a few minutes while the guards waited. Fiona had broken down, crying uncontrollably. Alica, I was mildly surprised to see, was weeping silently, tears rolling down her cheeks.

I signaled towards the guards and they began the process of cutting Scourge's body down and hoisting it onto a nearby cart.

"Come now." I commanded, and Alicia and Fiona followed me, the latter being practically carried by my escort. We walked down the steps and through the crowd and we stepped up into the carriage again. The doors closed and we began moving again.

"I'm sorry for this, but we're not quite done yet." I said after a few minutes of silence. Fiona was still crying uncontrollably. The cart came to a stop. We were out past the town now, in a secluded clearing in the woods.

The doors opened and we stepped out into the brisk, pine-scented air. Several Moebians were gathered with black hoods and masks. Scourge's body had been placed on a large tree trunk.

"This part, you don't have to watch so much as understand what is happening." I told the two with me. Fiona couldn't stop staring at Scourge's body, horror and grief on her face. God only knows what was going through Alicia's passive, tired expression. One of the Moebians in the black hood produced an axe while a few others were building a large wooden pyre.

"You understand that death is an absolute, but absolute death isn't a certainty, especially as it concerns Sonic. There have been several times, it would seem, that Sonic or one of his friends has died, only to come back against all odds. Sonic spent an entire year classified as dead once, only to come back from a voyage in space that no one had expected."

There was a loud, wet, _thunk_ as the axe separated Scourge's head from his body. Fiona closed her eyes and leaned on Alicia. Alicia kept staring ahead, impassive.

"Funny, though." I said, "Sonic dies for a year, and returns a hero. Back home to his love, his friends, and his home. I die for a year, and I return a memory everyone tried to forget."

His body and head were carried to the pyre. Oil was poured over the his remains and then ignited. Hot yellow flames burst up into the air, hungrily consuming Scourge's body and the wood it rested on.

"I digress." I continued, "The point is, when it comes to Sonic, and those closest to him, there is only one sure way to know that they're no longer a threat. And that is to destroy any evidence that they ever existed. This is finality. He's beheaded, to ensure there was no trickery at the gallows. That's a mercy, you understand. Because following that is cremation."

The flames rose high into the cold autumn air, heating the entire clearing.

"The public spectacle, that was to make a point. I don't tolerate treason. And I don't tolerate heroes. Traitors and heroes are one and the same to some people. This, of course, I do in secret. I don't need the citizens to think I'm doing this out of spite or hatred. I'm doing it from necessity. Scourge cannot be magically resurrected by any means now. Once the fire burns out, the ashes will be collected and scattered over a fast-moving river."

I stated all of this matter of factly. Fiona stopped crying for a moment.

"You… You're showing us how you're going to deal with me…" she said, her voice hoarse with tears.

"No, Fiona. You're not a Moebian. I don't have the jurisdiction to execute you. I'll simply exile you back to your universe. Back to where you first started."

"Really?" She asked, almost sounding hopeful.

"Yes. You know," I added," Tails once told me how he first met you on a deserted island. I mean, not _you_. It was a robot replica of you, when you were younger. Tails fell in love with it, not knowing it was a robot. But then, it turned out, it was a trap by Dr. Robotnik all along. Tails only escaped because the robot seized up in the salt water… You'll have to let me know if it's still there when you arrive."

Comprehension slowly spread on her face. She'd be exiled back to Mobius, yes, but to a desert island with no hope of escape and only a rusting doll of herself to keep her company.

"Relax, I'm sure someone will find you. It's a world of heroes, after all." I said.

Fiona began to cry again.

I felt the heat of Scourge's bonfire wash over me. I felt Fiona clutch at my royal robe, begging me for mercy. I saw Alicia withdraw. But in everything, I felt nothing. There was no joy in this, it simply had to be done. Even the cruelty I was going to inflict on Fiona left me with nothing. Not joy, not rage, not sadness.

I'd thought a lot about Buns when she talked about her creeping paralysis and at that moment, I understood why it felt familiar. Ever since I saw Marsh's grave, I felt that paralysis spread over me, numbing me to everything. I didn't hurt anymore. I was beyond that now. All I felt was a certainty that I was going to head back to Mobius again someday. It was clear now. I'd formed the plan once I saw Scourge in chains.

 _What no one who tries to deal with Sonic, any Sonic, ever really gets. Don't Give. Him. An inch!_

There was a Sonic still out there. And I wouldn't be able to rest until I watched him die like Scourge and I threw his ashes into a river, scattering him forever.


	21. 020 - A Sudden Stop

_020 - A Sudden Stop_

My army was expanding to about three thousand able warriors, trained by Buns to be ruthless killing machines. I'd given her and her captains all of the inside information I could about Mobian Freedom Fighter tactics. They laughed when I told them about their non-violent approach to warfare. Even with only three thousand men, this would be a cakewalk. I wouldn't have to lift a finger until Sonic showed his smug, heroic face.

I'd fantasized about what I'd do to the Freedom Fighters for months at this point. At first, I was content to merely vaporize them. Turn them into dust and constituent atoms. But, slowly, as my mind brooded on my situation, I started contemplating more ruthless and violent ends for them all. I liked the idea of fusing Sonic's knees to his leg bones, making him unable to bend his legs at all. Maybe pulverizing the joints of his hips so he couldn't run. Anything to take that distinctive feature away from him. Tails was harder to think about, since I still felt vaguely guilty about killing a child. But he was the one who created the Chaos Syphon. And he knew what it would be implemented for and he tricked me into giving away the key to my downfall. I wondered if I could suck the life force away from him, like he'd tried to do with me. I hadn't tried it before, so I figured I'd just do what felt right at the time.

Nicole would be the hardest one to destroy. The nanites he controlled were essentially microscopic super-computers. They all contained a backup of her data. I was sure a large-scale EMP would probably do the trick, and for that to happen, all I'd probably have to do is recreate the circumstances of a nuclear bomb; take an atom and split it. I'd save that for last, since there was a good chance I'd be caught in the blast and if I had to die to kill her, I'd prefer to do it knowing that I had eliminated all of the other cockroaches the masses of Mobius worshipped.

Buns gave me her rapt attention when I discussed my revenge fantasies. We'd grown close over the few short months I'd invited her to live at the castle to train my army. We often had dinner together and might stay up late talking strategies, tactics, or, just as often, revenge. She too hated everyone in Mobius with a passion and fervor that I had to admire. She was often furious at the Mobius-counterpart she had. One that never had to deal with a failing immune system and loss of motor function. Even though Buns had regained almost all of her motor skills, she was still furiously bitter.

We were becoming inseparable. Soon, she was taking over Alicia's spot on my left while I sat the throne. Purely as a royal advisor, but rumors started circulating that we were an item. The truth was more complicated than what most of the kingdom believed. The whole thing unnerved Dr. Kintobor, concerned as he was about Buns' wellbeing. He fretted that she might be going down a path of self-destruction, like the rest of her comrades.

But his work was proceeding quickly. Soon the warp ring was ready. It was large enough to accommodate the army marching fifty across. He warned me that the keeping the ring open would take a lot of energy and he had no way of coming up with a generator that could supply that in a reasonable time-frame but I told him not to worry. The origin of my power was still a very closely guarded secret.

The only issue I had left to deal with, I thought, was the small problem of Alicia's two lost comrades. Patch, the eye-patched version of Antoine deCoolette, and Boomer, the tech-savvy doppleganger of Rotor. Both of them had disappeared after their coup to get Scourge off the throne, and both were still loyal to Alicia. I knew in my gut that they would show up the moment I had my back turned to the affairs of the kingdom.

For my part, I'd spent the last few months trying to send out the impression that Alicia was in danger, so as to force their hand. Rumors were circulating that I had her trapped in a dungeon, that I was torturing her, or that I had her locked in my bedchambers as my own personal plaything. For her part, she _did_ look like all of the above were true. She'd been turning down food and had been slowly wasting away. Her hair was brittle and dry, her fur had lost its healthy sheen, and the amount of weight she'd lost was concerning. She looked like a shadow of her old self; a zombie that refused to die out of pure spite. She never cried or talked anymore. She'd been silent since Scourge's execution, trapped in a catatonic state wherein she only showed apathy. Apathy to everything. To food, conversation, even the sharp pain when the royal physicians had to inject a calorie-rich solution through an intravenous drip-bag. She stared ahead with unfocused eyes, slowly blinking and breathing.

Every day I expected Boomer and Patch to come bursting through the front door like Scourge had almost a year ago. I decreased the guards patrolling the perimeter and even built a new compound to house the army far away from the castle. But they refused to take the bait. And so, I had to use my last resort, and then I would be done with the meddlesome "Anti-Freedom Fighters" once and for all.

 _I miscalculated._

It was a freezing day on the tail-end of winter when I loaded Alicia into the carriage. She dressed all in black, even though I hadn't asked her to. We rode in silence. I didn't attempt conversation with her anymore. She just stared at me with those dead eyes. We finally reached the plaza where a gallows stood; the same site where Scourge had been executed. The crowd was much smaller than before, and where the crowd was alive and furious at Scourge, this one was subdued. For the first time it crossed my mind that the people might actually _like_ Princess Alicia, even though she'd long since lost her claim to the throne.

A single rope noose swayed in an imperceptible breeze as we walked slowly and solemnly up to the gallows. My eyes were alert. I was looking for one very large body and one skinnier body. The larger one, a walrus, should've been easier to spot in this meager crowd, I thought. But nothing happened as we stepped up the wooden stairs to the top of the platform. Alicia stepped forward, unbidden, under the noose and stared out at the crowd. This unnerved me a little. She knew what was happening and she wasn't doing anything to prevent it or even to enjoy the little life she had left.

"Sally Alicia Acorn, you're sentenced with the crime of treason, the penalty for which is to be hanged by the neck until dead. Do you have any last words?" I said in a loud voice. She stared ahead. I waited.

"So be it." I declared and signaled for the executioner to prepare the noose. And then I understood: She was already dead. She'd been dead from the moment she'd seen Scourge get captured. She'd honestly thought that something would save her from me, just as something had always come along up to that point. But when she saw my power on display, she knew what was an inevitability. She couldn't marry this power, she couldn't defeat this power, and this power wanted her throne. She knew that she would die and so she'd died inside already. She was ready to go and almost like spite, her last act would be to deprive me of any satisfaction that I might've received from her death.

But she was wrong if she thought I did this out of any sort of spite or misplaced satisfaction. I had to admit, in retrospect, I enjoyed Scourge's death. His sheer arrogance and cockiness was wonderful to see broken. But there was something in Alicia's dignified manner, after her defeat, that reminded me in that moment, vaguely, of the man I used to be. That person had died long ago, but that person had also harbored affection for Princess Sally. The woman who looked like this deposed princess standing with a hempen necklace. I felt a pang of tristesse in that moment, an emotion I hadn't felt for anyone but myself for a long time. But this was necessary.

As if to prove my point, two figures leapt from the crowd, pulling off dark hoods. The spitting image of Antoine with the addition of an eyepatch stood next to a large, purple walrus with some sort of canon built onto his arm. I looked at them sadly.

"You will let ze princess go, _immédiatement._ " Patch said, drawing a rapier and pointing it at my face. Boomer raised his canon which glowed green from deep inside the barrel.

"And then, you're gonna die." Boomer said, boldly.

I sighed. I glanced at the two of them. Their feet became firmly planted to the wooden platform and Boomer's gun sizzled and smoked as the glowing suddenly faded away. They looked at me in consternation as, if on cue, several soldiers revealed themselves from the crowd and climbed onto the platform to apprehend the two.

I had prepared words for these two. Some words to enrage them. How, when you looked at it in a certain way, this was all their fault. If they'd been more bold, they wouldn't have had to risk their princess' life. I had a monologue of spiteful, nasty things to say about these ancillary supporters to the princess. But the melancholy which filled me from seeing Alicia's apathy in the face of death had doused what little fire I had. They were fitted with nooses alongside Alicia. She closed her eyes and the trap doors opened. A loud series of cracks and it was over with.

A disturbing quiet fell over the crowd. No one said a word as the bodies hung for a few minutes and were cut down and carted away. Just eyes on me. I felt my skin crawl with them. It didn't matter. I knew that I didn't need to concern myself with their judgements. Now that I was firmly in control and the invasion of Mobius was about to be underway, I'd earn their love soon enough. We'd become the most powerful kingdom in the multi-verse, and if they still cried about their departed Alicia, then that was their problem. I walked away towards the carriage and watched the bodies be beheaded and burned personally.

When I returned back to the palace, I found Buns sitting in the throne to the left of mine. She looked at me walk through the open doors and she stood.

"So…?" She asked.

"She's dead. The plan worked. They're all dead. It's just you and me now." I replied, walking towards her.

The rest of the night went like it usually did. I ate dinner with Buns as we discussed the upcoming invasion and while nothing was amiss, I couldn't help but feel saddened by what had taken place today. And as I sat in my bedchambers, listening to Buns breathe softly on my bed, I couldn't figure out why I felt perfectly justified in the upcoming invasion and murders, but guilty over this execution. I pushed the feeling out of my mind. I needed to stay focused. I looked at Buns, sleeping, and marveled how I'd gotten to this point. I reflected on the chain of events that led me to that room at that time and as I traced it back, I landed on that last conversation I had with Nicole.

I felt the fire that burned inside ignite again. In a way, _they_ were responsible for these murders too. And I vowed that I would burn Mobius to the ground and from that ashen soil, a new kingdom would rise with me as its leader. And though I never put it into words, I knew that Buns would be my new queen. I didn't _love_ her, as I had Marsh. But I enjoyed her company and she seemed to enjoy mine, and there was no one else in two different universes that I trusted more than her.

The invasion took place a week later. The army was assembled with all of the equipment we could muster in a short time. We were able to recreate Buns' Restoration Unit robot with more formidable armaments in a limited degree. At least a hundred of my three thousand were piloting these. The rest were armed with rifles. They were all capable of hitting a moving target from fifty yards away. Not a fantastic army, really, but they'd do against the pacifists that populated the opposing army. And compared to the targeting systems in Eggman's Eggmech robots, they were all practically sharpshooters.

Buns and I stood before the army and in front of the large posts that stood at either side of the large, oval ring that stood behind us. It stretched across the parade ground's back wall glittering and dormant. All I had to do was use my own body to power it on and we'd march onwards towards victory.

I was dressed in my best suit, with the crown atop my head and a regal cape fastened to my shoulders. It wasn't formidable, but it clearly illustrated who I was and as I led my army, I wanted everyone in Mobius to know what I'd become because of them. Buns, on the other hand, was dressed in fatigues like the rest of the soldiers, with a green beret atop her head. They were pressed and crisp and a Sergeant Major insignia was emblazoned on her chest. She had a rifle on her back and a decorative officer's sword buckled to her hip.

I raised my hands to address the crowd.

"You are the best that Moebius could offer me," I said in a loud voice, echoing to the back of the parade grounds, "the bravest, most capable soldiers a king could ask for. And as we stand here on the brink of our most glorious achievement all I can do is stand in awe of our massive power." I paused to drink in the size of this army. It wasn't a very large army, but it was _mine._ I opened my mouth to speak again.

But I found that I couldn't. A sword had just burst, red and glistening, through my chest. Once my brain processed that, I felt the pain, starting near my kidneys and traveling through my body until it erupted out from my heart. I felt the wind rush out of me as my lungs collapsed and my heart spasmed painfully. Then, with a wet sound, the sword was pulled back out and I felt my legs go weak under me. I collapsed and saw Buns holding the dripping red officer's' sword in her hand. She had disgust on her face as she looked at me. I tried to gasp again and found that I couldn't make my lungs expand. My heart stopped beating.

I had never considered what would happen if someone tried to actually kill me. I was focused on stopping anyone from getting to the point. I thought for sure I had just died. I could feel my blood seep from my wound and soak my suit, pouring over my chest and stomach as I lie on the ground, staring at Buns sheathing her sword and standing in front of me.

And I heard cheering.

The army was cheering at my death.

"This!" She yelled into the crowd. "This is what Mobius is. They call _us_ the evil world. The Anti-everythin'. But they sent us an assassin. Someone who thought he could murder anyone who stood in his way and take what was never his! This _so-called_ king, who murdered our princess in cold blood, not even a week ago, thought he could control us to do his dirty work."

 _She was loyal._ I thought. _She was never mine. She was always Alicia's…_

"We reject Mobius. We reject that world that tries to stand on a moral high ground while plottin' murder. That's why I trained y'all. I raised this army for one purpose: to destroy Mobius. Leave none of those blood thirsty bastards standin'! We won't know peace until all of those sons of bitches are dead and in the ground!" She raised her fist into the air and the crowd went wild.

I realized, at that moment, that I wasn't going to die. If I was going to die, I would've been dead already. I wouldn't have heard her speech. I wouldn't have been watching her glare at me as she stepped over my body to approach the warp ring. I felt my heart beating again and my wounds healed. They were still sore but they were closed. Air filled my lungs again, and fire filled my heart.

"Now how in tarnayshun does this thing turn on?" I heard Buns say to herself, looking at the glimmering ring.

I stood up. I heard the crowd behind me go silent as I felt the rage fill my body. Buns had just enough time to turn around before I leapt at her, knocking her off her feet. We hit the ground, her struggling against me, me on top of her feeling her hands and legs punch and kick.

My hands wrapped around her neck and squeezed. I could feel her heart beating under my hands. Her eyes bulged. Her hands closed around my arms, flailing and bashing into my shoulders, my face. _The fur on your throat is so soft._ Her mouth gaped open, gasping for air. _You were going to be my queen._ Soldiers were rushing towards me and rebounding off a shield I had unconsciously put up around us. _You had kissed me. You loved me._ She kept punching my shoulders and arms, but they were getting softer and weaker. _Maybe I loved you after all._ Her hands hit my arms for a final time and then dropped to the dirt. _Why did you do this to me?_ Her eyes, bloodshot and swollen, rolled back into her head and I could feel the pulse in her throat stop beating.

I couldn't see her anymore. Tears were making everything blurry. I tried to blink them away. A loud buzzing was filling my ears. I could hear the army like a distant, far-off thing, screaming. My hands were still around her neck, but I wasn't squeezing anymore. She looked so small and fragile. She looked so beautiful. The only person I trusted in two universes. I had killed her.

 _She put a sword through your back._ I remembered the look on her face when I hit the ground. _She was disgusted._ She hated me. In the space of only a moment I'd realized that I wasn't beyond feeling. Realized that I needed someone's love. And that the person I thought needed my love hated me. And then I laughed.

I threw my head back and laughed a terrible, unhinged sort of giggle. The men closest to the shield stopped pounding on the invisible dome.

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with all of you people?" I giggled. I shakily got to my feet.

"I try to hide my powers and you think I'm a monster." The shield went down, but no one rushed forward to attack me. I stared at the ground, watching my feet stagger forwards slowly.

"I use them to help you all, and you stab me in the back." The buzzing was reaching a deafening pitch in my ears.

"I am a god who has descended to help you all, and you try to _kill me?_ To betray me and kill me?"

I heard a gunshot ring out and the bullet stopped an inch from my face. My head snapped up to see the army standing frozen in fear. My feet left the ground and the air started to swirl around me.

" _How did you think this was all going to end!?_ " I yelled. The men closest to me were being lifted up from the air current swirling around me. I felt my power fall over me like a full-body suit. My arms were longer, my legs taller. My body was encased in monstrous form fueled by rage and powered by unlimited power. The form took on the same turquoise color that my eyes burned with. Massive paws the size of manhole covers with razor sharp claws six inches long. The legs stood, digitigrade, like a common dog standing on its hind legs. It was bent over and large. A head emerged from the top with a large, grinning mouth filled with millions of needle-like teeth and a lolling tongue. Only the eyes broke from the turquoise fire that my new body wore. They were black. Deep and cavernous and no light could escape from them.

A group of soldiers rushed me, but a casual swipe of my massive hand send a dozen of them flying into the air. Blood rained over the crowd as my claws severed limbs from bodies. I saw a few trying to flee. But I had imposed a shield over the parade grounds. No one would enter. No one would leave. A missile flew from one of the repurposed recovery units. It exploded on impact with my head. The crowd cheered until the smoke cleared. I hadn't so much as flinched.

Then the massacre began.

I don't remember what happened exactly. If I try hard, I can catch glimpses. I grabbed one soldier by the arms and legs and pulled her apart, her innards raining down on the people below. I trampled dozens of soldiers carelessly as I moved to destroy the robots Buns and I had designed for our heavy weapons. I picked one up and crushed it like a soda can, hearing the screams inside come to an abrupt halt. One person was shoved into my open maw and was impaled on my millions of teeth. The blood didn't pool in my new body but rained freely down. There's more, but I don't like to think about it. I did… I did _terrible_ things.

When I finally came back to myself, I was lying on the far end of the parade grounds, exhausted and soaked in blood. The iron-rich tinge of fresh blood filled the air. Everyone was dead. Three thousand men and women were dead. They never stood a chance. I looked around me and saw the warp ring standing, glimmering on the other end of the parade ground.

I moved towards it. I was terrified at what I'd become. But I knew now that I needed no army. I felt a frenzy start to engulf me again. I picked up my pace and activated the warp ring. It spun quickly in the air and the interdimensional highway stood beyond it. I ran towards it now, sprinting and vaulting over the bloody remnants of my army. I slowed down a little and glanced at Buns' body lying at the entrance of the warp. Her eyes were still open, only the whites showing. I spat on the ground and turned away. I stepped over the threshold and felt the air change around me. The warp snapped shut behind me as I stopped holding it open.

 _That_ , I thought, _that was child's play to what I have in store for Mobius._ I sprinted down the looping and curvy highway towards the entrance to Mobius. I could see the end of the highway in the distance. All it would take was a little bit of my power to rip open a portal and hell would be unleashed. But then I felt a hand cover my mouth and another grab my waist. I flexed my power to throw them off, but they were immovable. I felt myself being thrown off the highway into the void. I saw dozens of other highways looping in the starry abyss fly by me as I fell. I struggled the whole way but whoever had caught me was stronger than I was. I could feel the air speed past me faster and faster. More highways whizzed past me, grey blurs in the interdimensional sky until I suddenly stopped far far away from any known dimension.

The creature who had caught me let go of me. I was floating in a strange place. I looked around me and saw crystal mazes spinning lazily in the air. The air seemed to change shapes in the far distance. Nothing seemed to stay still, despite there being little to move. And yet, everything moved at a slow pace. This didn't feel like random chaos. Wherever I was, was deliberate. I spun around to see who had brought me here, and I came face to face with myself, wearing a dirty, old, blue hoodie, and blue jeans.


	22. 021 - Man in the Mirror

_021 - Man in the Mirror_

He looked like me. He was me. He floated lazily in the air like I was doing, watching me calmly with an interested expression on his face. I didn't know what he was or what he was doing here. (Or even where here was.)

"You're-" I started.

"I'm you." He interrupted. "And you're me. Yeah." He added. He seemed really pleased with himself.

For my part, I was still filled with blood lust. I was moments away from my return, from my victory, and he - I - diverted me to this place.

"Where… Where are we?" I asked, looking around. I was frantically searching for a way out and the thought of tearing myself limb from limb kept crossing my mind.

"This is the Special Zone." He said, stretching his arms wide as if to present the nonsense behind him as his great masterpiece.

"Special… Zone…?" I echoed. He looked at me and blinked.

"Oh." He said. "Right."

I felt a tingle wash over my body. The blood staining my clothing and my skin broke away, leaving me clean. I also felt a calmness wash over me. I found it much easier to focus.

"What-?" I began.

"I cleaned you and kind of hijacked your hormone production to mellow you out. You seemed very intense and I kind of need you to focus on me right now and not any misplaced ideas for revenge."

I was still very confused. He sighed and closed his eyes.

"A few years ago, you had a passing thought when you first considered Moebius. That there could be an Anti-Tekk, just as powerful as you, only evil."

Almost like an echo I heard myself speak aloud words I had once thought:

An inverse Mobius… That meant that there was another Tekk out there. I wonder if he became weakened or even killed from his encounter with whatever their version of Chaos Energy was. Or did he become powerful like me, but because he was evil, destroyed everything.

"The Anti-Tekk. The Inverse Tekk. Moebius' Tekk. That's me." He spread his arms wide to present himself to me.

"Are you going to kill me?" I asked, feeling mortality for the first time in years.

"What?" He asked, shock on his face, "Why would I do that?"

"You're the evil Tekk, the one from Moebius…" It sounded like a lame reason even to myself as I said it out loud. Tekk just laughed.

"You murdered the entire Destructix Squad, everyone of note in Moebius, and an entire army, and you're asking if I'm the evil one?"

My actions, spelled out like this without the context I'd built around them made me understand the gravity of what I'd actually done. I felt sick.

"Oh my god… I'm the evil Tekk." I doubled over, falling into a fetal position while still floating in the air. Tekk laughed harder.

"No, no…" he wheezed, "You don't get it. There is no 'Evil Tekk' and no 'Good Tekk'. Just Tekk, and the good or bad things he's done. You're not a binary set of moralities. You had good reasons for everything you did... " He paused. "Okay, you thought you had good reasons for everything you did." He stammered a little. "Ah, well, okay, near the end there you kind of went a little nuts, but I can't blame you."

I looked up at his face. He seemed so… young. Carefree.

"How are you like this?" I asked.

"Happy?" He asked. I nodded. "It's easy when you see the big picture."

"The big picture?"

"Right." He nodded. Then frowned, "Right, you don't know about the big picture. So, first, you're the Prime Tekk. You originated from Mobius Prime. Whatever dimensions exist in the multiverse, they are all based, in some way, from your universe. That makes you special, in a way. But, that also means, in your particular set of events, you ended up turning your power on a microscopic level. You focused on manipulating atoms and matter, but never on the macro level." He paused waiting for me to catch up with his train of thought.

"On my end, I got this power and saw how I could… well, see. I could view the area around me. I could see everything, not just near, but far away. Not just in one direction, but in all directions. And I kept reaching my vision. Further and further I pushed it until, one day, I found that my sphere of attention expanded beyond the confines of my universe. And that's the crazy thing: once you see outside your perceivable universe, you comprehend everything that goes on inside it. I mean, everything. Everything that ever was, everything that ever will be. I was able to immediately perceive everything ever recorded, ever seen. I became omniscient. And once I understood how my universe worked, I understood how I worked and how limitless my potential was. I found that I could perceive everything that any of my multiverse counterparts experienced. I saw Tekks that fell in love. I saw Tekks that became artists and rulers. One even went mad and never used his powers at all. He still lives in the cave where he found the Chaos Seam, babbling endlessly, trying to piece together everything that I understand so effortlessly."

"And this makes you… happy?" I asked.

"No. Not really." He smiled. "It just makes me… disconnected. It's zen." He seemed to struggle for a moment for words.

"Okay… Okay." I breathed. "So, it's like this. You're upset. You're unhappy, right?" I nodded. "So, I can see the root of that unhappiness. Marsh, your- sorry, our, wife died. Tragically, she died, and she was alone and we could've been there if not for mob mentality and a series of decisions we'd made on how to act and conceal our potential from others and who we trusted. There's a long line of cause and effect, much of which we wouldn't have ever considered, that led to that moment in front of that mob where we were zapped into space for a year."

"You keep saying 'we'..." I said, feeling a little angry that this Tekk was so casually acting like he'd experienced this all.

"I already explained all this." He said, sounding annoyed and impatient, "I have seen and experienced, literally, ehv-er-ee-thing. Everything that ever happened to any version of us, I have seen through to the end and experienced it. Simultaneously. I've reached a point where I no longer really exist in any specific time or place. You and I are talking here, right now, but at the same time, I'm experiencing the coldness and pain of space, the warmness of Marsh's bed, the dank, stale air of the cave where you fell through the Chaos Seam and changed. All of this. I am no longer following time in a single, moment by moment basis, like you are. When I say that I feel the pain of Marsh's death, I mean that I am, at this moment, screaming on the hill in agony, seeing how she died alone and scared." He got quiet and somber for a moment.

"If I needed to, I could even see her on the hospital bed, sweaty and in pain, finding out our child was stillborn and I can see her heart rate dropping as she let go of any reason left to live." He said quietly.

Silence filled the air. I couldn't see that. I hadn't seen that. But this Tekk could. He was seeing it. And he was grieving. He was always grieving. He was always happy. He was experiencing a multitude of lives and universes all at the same time, from beginning to end. And he was staying surprisingly coherent through everything. He blinked his eyes and shook his head.

"Sorry. I try not to focus on those particular times I'm living because, well, they tend to bleed out into other times I'm experiencing. But there was a reason I brought you here."

"Where-" I started again.

"This is the Special Zone, I said that. Sorry if I interrupt you, by the way. I just know where this conversation is going and we're actually under a very strict time-constraint, so I need to push things along." He said quickly.

"And then," he continued, talking over me, despite my continued silence, "You ask me, 'what is the Special Zone?', I know. Right. So, let me start with my story. After I could conceive of everything, I saw how everything ended. And I knew that if I wanted us to survive in any shape or form, and keep our power intact in any way, I needed to act quickly. I had to leave Moebius before you showed up, because it wouldn't help for people to see two kings. And so I found a place that existed outside of the multiverse. The Special Zone." He stretched his arms wide again, trying to pick up where we left off a few minutes ago.

"This was where the guardian of the Chaos Emeralds, Feist, dwelled. He was a large, panda demi-god or something. His whole spiel was holding strange games and contests for the right to obtain even one of the gems. He kept several people imprisoned here for decades, driving them mad by the constantly morphing and changing rules that bind this place together." He nodded towards a maze spinning behind me. I turned and saw it turn into a bird and fly away, backwards, before changing into a half-pipe kind of race track.

"I showed up here," Tekk continued, "and he challenged me to a game. I said no, I just needed to stay here. He said that he'd let me play a game to decide that fate. I killed him. He thought he was immortal, but he was wrong. Now, he's just dead."

The lack of guilt or sadness in his voice worried me. But I didn't say anything. I had no room to judge.

"There's a moral justification for it. He was a being of power, and he used that power to entertain himself at another being's expense. There's precedence for that, but that's not the point. Look, you have to understand that what you've done, you cannot undo. I can't bring Feist back. You can't bring Marsh back. You can't even bring Buns back, even though you fixed her broken body once. We can't change what happened. And, yeah, that gets tricky when you consider all of time to 'have happened already', but I don't have time to get into that right now." He'd been talking faster and faster and he stopped himself abruptly. He took a deep breath.

"I'm… I'm sorry. There's a lot to cover here and the time window is closing." He held up his hands to keep himself slowed.

I was baffled. The only time I could recall acting like this was when I first met Marsh. I was so nervous and scared that I rambled, just like this Tekk was rambling at me. Most of it was going over my head, but I had understood that he had some sort of plan for me.

"Look, Tekk." He began slowly, "You're broken. We can examine it a billion different ways and come down to where the string of unfortunate events and decisions started, but it doesn't help. It just explains exactly why you're broken. But you don't need that. You already know."

"Marsh…" I whispered.

"No…" He whispered back, imitating my somber tone. I felt my blood boil.

"Sorry," He said quickly, "I mean that, no, it's not just Marsh. Marsh didn't break you, anymore than Buns broke you. It's not their fault. And it's not Nicole's fault. It's not Sonic's fault or the Freedom Fighter's fault. And ultimately, it's not even really your fault. The problem really comes from the fact that you've never forgiven yourself for letting Marsh die. There were a million different ways that these events could've played out, but the ones that we chose, played out in this way. We've avoided thinking about what we could've done, because it hurts to know that we might have done something differently. But, instead of thinking about the future and how we could better refine our actions to avoid the same mistakes, we've focused on shifting the blame to everyone but ourselves. And, as such, we are doomed to continue repeating our same mistake over and over again. Each time, it'll feel like a vindication of our self-loathing. It'll feel like we deserve these bad things to happen to us. That it's inevitable. But it's not. I know it's not. We can get better. We do get better. That's what I need to talk to you about."

I opened my mouth to talk again. But I couldn't think of anything to say.

"She's gone Tekk." He said soberly, "She's gone and she can't come back and we have to move on. We'll never stop loving her. She changed who we are. For the better sometimes. For the worse others. And it hurts, and in a way, that hurt will never really go away. Marsh is dead. Buns, for the brief time that you fell in love with her, despite trying to avoid exactly this pain, is dead too. This hurts us and causes us to lash out and wall ourselves off. To try and kill the emotions that can make us feel like we're dying. But we can't let that happen. Because we can't kill our emotions. When we try, we cut off our empathy and can only feel a primal rage underlying everything we do. We wall it up, and compress it, and try and squash it… Then we snap and we become a beast and we kill. It's inevitable. Others have the chance to die before those violent suppressed feelings erupt. Others have the luxury of being extremely limited in their capacity for destruction. We don't have that luxury. We can't just wait out our anger. We can't wait out our emotions. We need to feel them, free them, and then move on. Because if we don't, we can destroy everything."

"And, most of all, "He continued, " we need to love again. That connection is the only way we can remind ourselves what's at stake. It'll hurt. It will. They will die, again and again. I've seen it. I see it. This would've happened with Marsh naturally. Or Buns. We're immortal. They're not. We would've watched them age. Watched our children age. We would outlive all of them and have to exist with the pain of losing them. But we have to move on. We never stop loving them, even when they're gone, but eventually, you learn that there's always room for more love. New love. Different love. All of it exciting, all of it fresh, all of it painful when it ends. But without it, there's only anger. Anger and death. Tekk, you've spent so much of your time refining your powers to destroy. Now you have a chance to build."

The sky around us started to shimmer and wobble.

"It's starting." He said.

"What's starting?" I asked, worried. The peaceful talk we'd just been having was suddenly replaced with a wild panic.

"They call it the Super Genesis Wave. They're trying to stop it from destroying everything… But it doesn't entirely work. All of the different multiverses will collapse in on themselves, compressing themselves until only one universe remains. Mobius Prime. I've been feeling the universes end abruptly. I knew there was a finite end for everyone except for you. I brought you to the Special Zone, because it exists beyond the confines of the universes. It's a pocket zone with a direct link to Mobius Prime. When the Super Genesis Wave hits us, I'll be gone, this place will be gone, and you'll find yourself back in Mobius Prime. You'll still be you as you are now. Everyone else will have forgotten you ever existed. But you'll know. You'll carry the deaths of those people on your shoulders, but let those soldiers be a reminder of what is at stake as you carry on." The sky was growing lighter. The shapes and forms of the zone were unraveling. Tekk was fading away as he started frantically shouted at me, "Build, not destroy. Build Tekk! Build and love! Don't hate and destroy! Build-!"

And then the worlds ended.


	23. 022 - Skyscrapers

_022 - Skyscrapers_

I found myself lying on soft grass under warm sunlight. A breeze fluttered the fur on my face as I stared at the sunlight dancing through the leaves of a sycamore tree. I sat up and saw that the hill I was lying on was the very one that Marsh had been buried on. I looked around but found no headstone or grave. Just a hill overlooking the city of New Mobotropolis. It somehow seemed shinier and cleaner than I remembered.

I looked down at myself. I'd lost the robe and crown, but I was still wearing my suit. A large hole still lay bare above my heart. I was still myself. I didn't know how I got here, but what I had told myself was true. The universes must have ceased to be plural. I didn't know that this would _reset_ everything. But that's exactly what it did. Things were mostly the same, but the specifics were different.

The city layout was just like I remembered it, only some shops or houses had switched places. Some store owners were different people. I saw a blue blur race down one of the streets and saw how people turned and cheered for him. I felt a pang of anger wash over me. But, then I forced myself to let it go. Even before this strange universal reset, Sonic was innocent in anything that hurt me. I had convinced myself that he was the ultimate cause of my pain. But it wasn't true. I took a deep breath and moved onwards.

I saw people I once knew on the streets, passing me from time to time. I saw Darx and an echidna woman walking hand in hand. She looked pregnant. He didn't so much as glance at me as I passed by him. I never existed here, it seemed. I wondered if Marsh was still alive in this world. Her headstone was gone. Maybe she was still alive. But, I knew that finding her was wrong. Moving ahead and letting her go were the only ways I could continue. Finding her would only bring back too many complicated memories and emotions, and she would be completely unequipped to deal with a relationship that she never had. This new Marsh, _if she existed_ , would be a different woman. Same beautiful body, maybe, but different life experiences, thoughts, and emotions.

And as I ambled through the city, I knew that I couldn't stay here. I had no home here. I had disintegrated my home. I turned it into dust to spite Nicole. And even in this rebooted universe, that building could no longer exist. A house like the one I lived in might be right where my old one was, but this would be a different house, because it had never housed _me_. I needed to leave here.

I needed to leave, not just because of the high minded reasons I understood, but also because I still felt the urge to kill. It was waxing and waning as time went on, but I knew that if I stayed, I could easily fall into a cycle of anger again. No one here deserved my wrath. I laughed at myself when I considered that ultimately Tekk told me that I needed to be responsible with my power. The very thing I was concerned with at the outset of my new life, and at some point, I'd forgotten how easily it would be for me to lose control. In some ways, I really was just a normal Mobian. But, like I said, while others had the luxury to lash out at people, I couldn't. Someone might throw a violent tantrum and destroy their house. I knew that my violent tantrums could rack up casualties in the thousands. And while those soldiers now never existed in the first place, I still felt the weight of those deaths on me. And I needed to prevent that from happening again.

So I left New Mobotropolis. I left the ongoing conflict of Eggman and Freedom Fighters behind and I walked until I found a wasteland. I was weeks away from life and here I knew I would be safe to let my feelings out. And I did. I smashed a hole into this wasteland. I cried and screamed. I vented all the frustration, rage, anger and malice that I'd ever felt. I let out the mourning I felt for Marsh and even Buns. It would've been a shameful display, if it weren't for the sheer necessity of it. In the end, I lay in a canyon miles wide and long, torn open from my power. The dust blew over me and over the canyon and I felt clean and balanced. Ready to try something.

 _Build!_

And so I did. It was slow going at first, but I had time. Coaxing the dust together to form a solid surface took months, but eventually, I built a small house. It was lopsided and fragile, but it was built by me. I learned a lot from that one structure, and so I started another. And another. It started as an effort to keep my mind away from my past, but eventually it took on a life of its own. I built one building, then another, and then another. Each iteration was bigger and more refined. Buildings soon had two stories. Then three. The next might have plumbing, created by binding atoms together. The next, glass. I never did figure out how to change the colors, and so after a few dozen years, all of my buildings still looked like the dust they were made of. But some of it was hard as steel, some as porous and pocked as asphalt.

Eggman's mechs found me once. I destroyed all of them handily while forcing the last to watch. Then I told Eggman that I wouldn't interfere with him if he left me alone. There were a few continued hostilities after that. More and more robots showed up, and all of them would be unraveled and torn apart methodically as I explained again and again to Eggman that I wanted no part in his machinations. Eventually, they stopped coming. That was the only time I used my power to destroy anything that wasn't rocks or dust or failed attempts at a building.

After a hundred years, I'd gotten quite adept at building towers and skyscrapers. I could create one from scratch in less than a day. I built a large tower with no stairs nor elevator with a throne atop it just for me. It wasn't to rule over this city, though. It was so I could look at it and enjoy what I'd built. As fun as it was to walk through a newly finished building, there was something about seeing the cityscape sprawl out under me that made me feel peaceful. It made me… happy.

One day, I discovered that people were living in one of my older buildings. They had nowhere else to go, so I let them stay. More people cropped up and while I tried to ignore them and focus on my work, I picked up scraps of news from the world I'd left behind. The war continued far away. This was a safe haven for refugees. Eventually, after another hundred years, there was no more war. New Mobotropolis was called something else now. The Eggman Empire wasn't a thing anymore. And the few times I inquired about places I knew once, I was met with confused looks. So I went back to building my buildings.

I built skyscrapers that towered high out of the canyon and kissed the sky. Each time I exceeded my throne tower, I expanded it so it would be at least a little higher than the new building. And then, I found buildings that I hadn't built. Without me noticing, the handful of refugees that inhabited my buildings had grown into a bustling city. And so I was content to sit in this throne and watch.

I admit I've lost track of the years, but I think I've been sitting here for almost two hundred years at this point. I know that I've been lost to legend now. Some people don't think that I really exist. They call this city _Dustopolis_ and refer to me as the God of the City or the King. Some call me the Architect, and I think I like that name best of all. Every few decades, someone scales this tower and asks a boon of me. If it's in my power, I give it. Most of the time I can't do anything but carry them back to the base of the tower disappointed. As such, few people make the journey anymore. I can't bring back loved ones. I can't grant wishes like a genie. But if they have a specific request for a building or something tangible I can build, I can usually accommodate that. And that, really, is my story.


	24. 023 - Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Talia looked at him intensely sitting on his dust throne. It was dizzyingly high atop his tower, but she felt safe here at his side, knowing that if a gust of wind were to catch her, he'd stop her from falling. Her fur glowed a burnt orange in the setting sun. She wore the tiger stripes of her father on the velvet fox fur of her mother, and her eyes were focused on this god that sat before her.

But, no, that wasn't right. If anything, the story he'd told her only proved that he wasn't a god. Not some deity that knew right and wrong. He was just a mortal in an immortal's skin. Someone who had to learn how to ground his uncontrollable power.

She'd surprised him when she showed up. It had been decades since the last visitor he'd had, he said. But when she told him that she wanted no wish granted, but only wanted to hear his story, he was nonplussed.

"There are some that worship you down there." She had said.

"I know. I wish they wouldn't." He had said.

"You could tell them to stop." She offered.

"Who am I to tell anyone what to do?"

"Well, who are you?" She asked. He smirked.

"Usually, people ask me who I was…"

"Okay, then, who were you?" She asked, playing his game.

He took a deep breath and began,

"Two things: Who I was is unimportant. How I died, is…"

He told his story for hours and Talia listened intently. This was what she'd come for. She had heard snippets of his life's story growing up in Dustopolis, and as she started to piece his story together, she felt her heart break for him. She knew she didn't have the whole story, but every day she would look at the Architect's Tower and she knew that far from being a god, he was a broken, miserable thing. And Talia had a soft spot for broken things.

So she made the climb. She came prepared with food and water. It took a day and a half to climb the tower, the elevator had long ago stopped functioning and the religious types refused to repair it because it was 'sacrilege' to try and 'repair what was perfect by design'. She didn't buy into that. She found him sitting in a comfortable looking throne looking out at the city. He was younger than she'd imagined. He looked about her age. His orange fur burning in the rising sun, but with darker stripes running back across his forehead. Maybe he was part tiger too, like her?

She'd asked for his story and he told it. All of it. She was horrified by it. She was enamoured by it. And in the end, she understood Tekk Lanyang a little better. Definitely better than the fanatics at the base of his tower.

"So you built all of this…" She started, nervous to ask the next question. "Did you ever… love…?"

I seemed genuinely surprised.

"You're a woman of many surprises." He said, smiling kindly at her. She felt herself go hot at his gaze. "No. No I never did."

"Why not?" Talia asked. She stopped herself from adding things like, "You're handsome enough" and "I'd go out with you in a heartbeat". Tekk sighed and closed his eyes.

"I lost my ability to connect with people. At first I stayed away for their safety. By the time I knew I had gotten past my anger and loss, I was completely alone and enraptured in my work. Then, they started worshipping me. Not in a religious sense, you understand. They treated me like an eternal force of nature. I was up here, they were down there. Asking one of them to marry me, if I could relate to one long enough to fall in love, would be like asking them to marry the sky or the ground. It was confusing to them so I stayed up here."

She scooted a little closer to him, sitting on the steps next to his throne.

"I'm sorry all this had to happen to you…" She said, looking out at the city, seeing what he saw.

"Me too." He said, sadly. "But in a way, I finally got what I wanted."

"What?"

"The people down there. They look to me as some kind of hero. I've stopped a dozen natural disasters, a score of wars and battles. I've protected them and they know that I'm here for them. That's all I ever wanted, really." He still looked sad.

"There was something else you wanted… Wasn't there?" She knew she was getting too on-the-nose now. She was being less and less subtle. But she felt a burning in her heart now. She knew, after hearing his story, that she wasn't being silly. She loved him. She knew it. She could only hope that he might love her back, even a fraction of what she felt for him.

"I keep seeing a wife. A daughter. Or a son. Something I was promised. Something I almost had, but then it was taken. I've built a city, but for myself, I've created nothing but misery."

She slipped her hand under his. He took it, squeezed it.

"Can I still get a wish…?" She asked. He turned his head and looked at her. His eyes seemed almost pleading as she looked into them.

"If I can grant it…" He said.

"Take me far away from here. Take me to a new place where they haven't heard of you before and see if you're ready to love again…" She blinked back tears, terrified of what the answer might be either way.

He took a deep breath and stared at her face. Then he smiled.

And he granted her wish.


End file.
